Archive | September, 2026

NPE Houston Was the Bomb

30 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/30/2026

This weekend, an NPE conference was held at the Hyatt Hotel in Conroe, Texas a suburb of Houston. It was a bit isolated but with the high temperatures outside there was not a strong inclination to leave the air-conditioned hotel to go explore the local scene. The venue with its spacious meeting rooms and smaller breakout spaces was perfect. In his conference opening remarks Jep Cappo, President of the American Federation of Teachers Texas, said education had become the top political issue here and in her opening remarks, Diane Ravitch commented that if this election goes well, Gina Hinojosa might be able to end the new Texas voucher program.

Breakfast in the Main Conference Room

The conference was officially scheduled for Saturday and Sunday but those of us who arrived before 7 PM on Friday were able to see a new 90-minute film about the attack on public education in Texas. A longtime Houston lawyer, Chris Tritico, financed a small team creating the film. The main creator told us she just loaded it from her computer that morning and this was the first time it had been shown anywhere. What we saw will be edited more but it was a powerful indictment of Governor Abbott and the billionaire enemies of public schools.

The Conference

By the time Saturday was over, we were all extremely tired. At 8 AM, breakfast was served along with speeches by Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Zep Cappo, the Texas AFT leader, and the President of the Network for Public Education (NPE), Diane Ravitch. Randi was her usual audience pumping self, Zep was a very engaging former middle school science teacher and Diane was typically inspirational.

This was followed by two one-hour plus long breakout sessions. One difficulty at NPE conferences is having to choose among six very engaging subjects each with 3 to 5 expert presenters. In session-2, “A View from the Trenches: What Universal Vouchers Are Doing to Public Schools in Florida and Arizona” I learned that the voucher movement in Florida started when Jeb Bush ran for governor in 1994. He lost but his proposal for school vouchers remained in play. Since Arizona and Florida have implemented Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA vouchers), their spending on vouchers graphs like a hockey stick with Arizona zooming to $1.2 billion and Florida going to more than $5 billion.

After the morning sessions it was time for lunch and an address by Raymond Pierce, President and CEO of the Southern Education Foundation. Raymond is a long-time presence in education including serving in the Department of Education with the Clinton administration.

After lunch, came session-3 followed by a skill builder workshop. I attended the “How to Follow the Money” workshop presented by Maurice Cunningham, Mercedes Schneider and David Armiak. David is the research director at the Center for Media and Democracy. I learned from him that the IRS site has an exempt-organization master list which he downloads from time to time and compares to the previous list and finds new exempt filings.

At 5:30 PM, Diane Ravitch introduced everyone to the new President of the National Education Association (NEA), Princess Moss. Her remarks were inspiring and I came away convinced that the NEA has a bold new leader protecting public education. She stated that she did not want to just protect public schools against attacks but wanted to expand their reach. At the mixer that followed, I was able to take a picture with Ms. Moss.

After this, it was time for a mixer and we were more than ready for a break.

Sunday started with an 8 AM session. I attended “How Nontraditional Public School Advocates Support Public Education.” I was drawn to this Session because Charles Foster Johnson was a presenter. This Baptist preacher has been a tremendous and effective supporter of public education for decades.

After the session, we had brunch and a keynote address by Katherine Stewart. As impressive as all of the speakers had been, she stole the show. Katherine has written three magnificent books about the Christian Nationalist attack on public schools and democracy; The Good News Club, The Power Worshipers and Money Lies and God. To research for these books, she has invaded the lion’s den and met Christian Nationalist advocates and supporters at their events. This courageous woman is known and disliked at these gatherings but she still goes.

Two points Katherine made in her talk were Christian Nationalism undermines not just public education but all democratic institutions. And the other point that caught my attention was the person you agree with 80% of the time is your 80% friend not your 20% enemy.

The next session I attended was named “Religious Nationalism, Education, and Democracy: A Conversation with Katherine Stewart.” In this session, the two salient points Katherine made that caught my attention were authoritarianism is not only marked by corruption; it is marked by incompetence and the attack on knowledge is an attack on Democracy. In an answer to my question about how can anyone think that opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) resonates as a politically astute move? She responded that the right rejects DEI because it rejects pluralism.

The conference wrapped up with an address by Leslie Fenwick, Dean Emerita and Professor Howard University School of Education. Early on she stated, “I am tired of the finger being waged at educators.” These finger waging people know nothing about education. Fenwick described taking graduate students to The Smithsonian National Museum for African American History and Culture. After touring the many exhibits, the students became angered. These were top students with many accolades including some who had been accepted as Rhodes Scholars. They were angered because they never learned much of this material in school.

Conclusion

This was my 7th NPE conference. It seems as if each conference tops the previous one. Quite naturally this conference was focused on the public education destruction going on in Texas and to some extent around the U.S.

My Every Conference Photo with Diane Ravitch

In the past, I have come home beyond exhausted because I was not wise enough to get in bed as early as possible while at the event. This time, I actually controlled myself and only came home tired but ready to roll the next day. I hope everyone who reads this post is inspired to go to the next NPE event.

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NPE Going to Houston

23 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/23/2026

I am looking forward to the Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in Houston September 25-27. It seems when public schools and human rights are under attack that is where NPE schedules its conference. In 2015, we went to Chicago where I amazingly formed a relationship with Karen Lewis that lasted until she sadly succumbed to brain cancer. In 2016, we were in Raleigh, North Carolina where transgender students were under attack and succeeding conferences have followed a similar pattern. Why Houston, Texas? Houston has Texas’s largest school district. It was cynically taken over by the state as part of Governor Greg Abbott’s ongoing effort to privatize public education.

It is not just in Houston but public education in all of Texas is under attack by the Governor and his team. In 2015, Abbott appointed Dallas Independent School District (DISD) Trustee, Mike Morath, the state’s Commissioner of Education. Morath’s only education experience was as a substitute teacher in one class for part of a year and serving for two terms on the DISD board. When he ran for school board in 2011, he was unopposed and became the first of a new wave of pro-school privatization and business community PAC supported candidates. He initiated the Houston school takeover.

At the beginning of this month, ABC New Channel 13 in Houston reported that 14 districts in the state are under threat of takeover. The list includes the Clarksville, Cleveland, Coldspring-Oakhurst, Elgin, Judson, Kingsville, Manor, Nacogdoches, Poteet, Runge, San Angelo, San Antonio, Spring and Waco school districts. The schools all have a large percentage of low-income students and high rates of Black and Hispanic students.

The Absurd Houston Takeover

Abbott signed two laws that accelerated school takeovers and privatization efforts. In 2015, HB 1842 was passed and signed into law. It states that if a district has one school that fails testing for five years in a row that the state must close that school or takeover the district and appoint a new school board. In 2017, SB 1882 gave schools the option of turning over a failing school to a private entity such as a charter school. This is the legal machinery that is aligned against Texas public-school districts.

Make Morath originally attempted to takeover Houston Independent School District (HISD) in 2019. The takeover was blamed on poor testing results at Phillis Wheatley High School. The next year, HISD sued and, in 2020, a Travis County district judge halted Morath’s plan by granting a temporary injunction. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) got the states supreme court to overturn the injunction in 2022. They argued that a 2021 law, SB 1365, allowed the state to takeover HISD. It is notable that Harold Dutton, a state Representative from Houston, voted for SB 1365.

Houston ISD is the largest school district in Texas with about 200,000 students and 284 schools. The takeover was blamed on the venerable Phillis Wheatley High School which opened on January 31, 1927. Famous alumni include Archie Bell of Archie Bell and the Drells, actor Charles Robinson (Night Court), band director Freddy Gains, football star Lester Hayes and many more. U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee referring to Wheatley said,

“I’m emotional about it because Barbara Jordan went here. She held this office. Mickey Leland went there. He held this office.”

NPE Executive Director Carol Burris wrote about Wheatley for the answer sheet blog. She noted that Phillis Wheatley High School had been regularly rated as “academically acceptable” until YES Prep opened nearby in 2011. During the 2021-2022 school year, Wheatley served 10 times as many Black students and more than twice as many students with disabilities as YES Prep.

Still the district and the school were making excellent progress. According to the state’s measure in 2022 HISD was B-rated and in less than 2 years 40 of the 50 schools that had received a D or F ratings were rated C or better. Phillis Wheatley High School was rated a C with a score that was two points away from a B rating. Yet Morath and Abbott ignored reason and went ahead with their ill-conceived takeover.

At the time, New York University Professor, Domingo Morel, claimed:

“The Houston public school system is not failing. Rather, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, Education Commissioner Mike Morath, and the Republican state legislature are manufacturing an education crisis to prevent people of color in Houston from exercising their citizenship rights and seizing political power.”

The Privatization Train

During the 2024, election, Abbott got rid of the rural politicians that did not support vouchers. According to Propublica he was able to get millions in contributions from billionaire donors to eliminate many fellow Republicans from the statehouse. TikTok investor Jeff Yass of Pennsylvania kicked in $6 million, a Besty Devos group put up $4 million and the federal Club for Growth coordinated with another PAC to add $8 million to the privatization effort.

The pro-voucher candidates Abbott supported won. The governor’s voucher crusade represents the culmination of more than three decades of work by Christian conservative donors, whose influence in Texas politics has never been more pronounced. They have poured millions of dollars into candidates and helped lead or fund a network of organizations, such as the influential Texas Public Policy Foundation to galvanize Republicans around public-school privatization.

Before being appointed by Morath to run Houston’s schools, Make Miles was leading Third Future Schools, a charter school in Colorado. TEA’s newly appointed leaders Sandi Massey in Beaumont ISD and Ena Meyers at Lake Worth ISD also worked at Third Future Schools.

Third Future has expanded into Texas. They operate the Texas Partnerships which is an option for saving a district with a poorly scoring school. By contracting out the operation of that school to Texas Partnerships the takeover onus is lifted. So far, 44 campuses have contracted with the Texas Partnership of which 14 are preschools that are not part of the state’s ratings system. The Texas Observer reported:

“Of the remaining 30 schools, 18 ended their time under private management with failing state overall accountability ratings, according to an Observer analysis of TEA ratings and academic performance reports. Eleven posted worse ratings in at least one of their two final contract years than those schools did in the year before the private partnerships began.

Hope to See You in Houston

NPE 2025 in Columbus, Ohio

This weekend in Houston, I expect to hear more details about the attack on public schools in the state and what efforts are being taken to counter them. Zeph Capo, President of Texas American Federation of Teachers, will most assuredly be a great source of information during his keynote speech. And the founder of Pastors for Public Education, Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, will also have some interesting items to share.

There are many speakers that I am looking forward to hearing and the author Katherine Stewart is one of them. Her three books, The Good News Club, The Power Whorshippers and Money Lies and God are master works of research and good writing. I consider Kathrine a friend and am excited to see her again.

Also speaking are Randi Weingarten, President American Federation of Teachers, Professor Maurice Cunningham from Boston and Professor Julian Vasquez Heilig from everywhere. These are some of my favorite people and I always look forward to tipping a few with them and hearing what they have to say. Because of word length limitation, there are many great speakers that I have not mentioned.

I am also looking forward to eating some Texas beef. It will be a special weekend.

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Steady Education Privatization Advancing in California

9 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/9/2026

This post looks at the state of public education in California. It is important to be clear that charter schools are not public schools but are private schools financed by the public. I firmly believe that the great gift from our forefathers was public education for all. It may be surprising for many people but it can be shown that public schools are superior to all forms of privatized schools including charters and high-end private schools. Therefore, the continuing expansion of charter schools in California can only be explained by their superiority over public schools in marketing.

The first step in this evaluation was to download and graph enrollment data. The next six graphics show the rate of privatization and other k-12 school enrollment trends.

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

Figure 3:

Figure 4:

Figure 5:

Figure 6:

Figure 6 is based on data provided by the World Population Review. For the past decade, a right-wing friend (yes, I have a few) has been telling me that people have given up on California and that there is a mass exit occurring. This graph says that my friend is misinformed. In fact, between 2015 and 2025 the state’s population grew by half a million people.

Interestingly, Figure 1 based on data from the California Department of Education shows that California’s publicly supported student population decreased by half a million students between 2015 and 2025. One possible explanation for this decline might be that many children started attending private schools. However, Department of Education data graphed in Figure 5 shows that from 2015 to 2025 private school enrollment only grew by 13,775 students. The Little Hoover Commission reports on two factors that are likely behind the public-school enrollment declines; the population is aging and fertility rates are decreasing both of course leading to less students.

Figures 3 and 4 break out the attendance of the five largest ethnic groupings. Hispanic students constitute about 56% of California’s student population. Their attendance from 2015 to 2025 decreased by 150,000 students. The second largest ethnic group, White students, saw their enrollment fall by more than 370,000 students over the same period. African Americans decreased by 85,000 students and Filipinos by 29,000 students. Asian enrollment grew by 37,000 students marking them as the only ethnicity to expand their numbers.

Growing Privatization

Since their 1994 inception, charter schools have been educating an expanding percentage of California students. Figure 2 is a graph of the percentage of charter school students enrolled in California over past 10 years. The data shows that charter school enrollment has averaged 0.35% percentage growth per year going from 9.7% of total enrollment in 2015 to 12.7% in 2025.

California’s charter school establishment and growth have always been a billionaire financed and led effort. The first California charter school was authorized in 1994. The original charter school law capped the number of these schools at 100; however, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, successfully campaigned to end that limitation.

A powerful proponent of the privatization movement has been the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). It was founded in 2003 with an uncompensated Caprice Young listed as CEO. CCSA’s first tax report was filed less than two months after the founding and showed no activity or appointed board. The next tax report in 2004 listed Walmart billionaire, John Walton on the first CCSA board of directors. He died in a plane crash in 2005 and his billionaire niece, Carrie Walton Penner, took John’s seat on the board. Reed Hastings was a CCSA board member from 2007 until 2015. (TIN: 51-0465703)

There were other billionaires supporting the charter school movement. The history tab at the NewSchools Venture Fund (NSVF) website states, “NewSchools Venture Fund was created in 1998 by social entrepreneur Kim Smith and venture capitalists John Doerr and Brook Byers.” Doerr and Byers are both billionaires. Kim Smith was a friend of John Doerr’s and a graduate student at Stanford when she wrote a two-page paper outlining NSVF which promotes charter schooling.

Bill Gates and the Walton Family Foundation are the largest individual donors to NSVF. In 2020 their grants totaled $226,881,394. Over the last 20 years, billionaires John Doerr, Laurene Powell Jobs and John Sackler have served on the NSVF board.

Research by the Network for Public Education revealed that charter schools are plagued by instability. In the first three years of operation, more than 15% of new charter schools close their doors and eventually half of all charter schools go out of business. Charter promoting organizations like CCSA and NSVF counter that charter schools get better test results, but testing by California’s Department of Education shows the opposite.

Some parents who put their children in charter schools do not recognize the risks. In many states, charter schools are exempt from most state and local laws, rules, regulations, and policies governing public and private schools, including those related to safety, personnel and students. Unlike public schools, charter schools in California are not required to meet earthquake safety measures. Dr. Lucy Jones of the California Seismic Safety Commission was asked if she thought public schools were safer than charter schools. Her simple answer was “Yes.”

The most rigorous and most expensive study of charter school performance commissioned by the US Department of Education found no overall positive effect for charter schools. Maybe the reason billionaires like charter schools is a mindless belief in private business or maybe they see a business opportunity. Whatever the case, the result is they are undermining that great public education gift from America’s forefathers.

Conclusion

Public education in California is facing two issues, a decreasing student population and attack by the unbelievably wealthy. Like almost every other issue plaguing society, the increased concentration of wealth in a relatively few hands is a significant driver for education privatization. It follows that stopping the demise of public education requires reversing today’s great concentrations of wealth.

Public education in California is relatively healthy but the ongoing charter school privatization drive is creating two problems. Our public schools have been the great training ground for democracy and social cohesion. With more than 90% of students attending public schools, Californians had a common background and a shared understanding of democracy in action. Now that is disappearing. With more than 12% of California students attending privatized schools we are losing commonality and the ideals of a democratic society.

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