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Crisis for Public Education and Democracy

19 Jun

By Thomas Ultican 6/18/2026

A new report from the Network for Public Education (NPE) documents the ongoing demolition of public schools. For more than a century, public education has provided the means by which the diverse American public became naturally homogenized. At the same time, they have made the US’s vast population the most well-educated people on the planet. For not easily understood reasons, over the past 40-years, the ultra-right and the uber-rich have been attacking America’s public schools.

The NPE conclusion to their report — “Public School in America; Measuring Each State’s Commitment to Democratically Governed Schools” — states:

“This report tells a clear and troubling story. Across the country, statehouses are making deliberate choices — choices that defund neighborhood schools, strip teachers of dignity and professional standing, leave vulnerable children without protection, and redirect billions of public dollars to private alternatives that are too often beyond public control. These are not accidents of policy or the unintended consequences of well-meaning reform. They are the predictable results of an ideological campaign, decades in the making, whose architects have been candid about their ultimate goal: the elimination of public education as Americans have known it.” (NPE Report page 26)

Report Basis

Carol Burris, the director of NPE, led this report. She is a former New York city school principal and has been conducting research on the state of America’s public schools for more than a decade.

To ensure an objective finding, Carol and her team developed a set of four standards each weighted with different point totals. The maximum points possible were 102.

The expansion of privatization and student protection was set to 58 points. For this evaluation, charter schools and vouchers deducted from the totals for various reasons. For example, states lost 2 points if they had a voucher program that does not require accreditation for private schools. States also lost 2 points if they allowed multi-school charter authorizations based on a company having one school receiving a charter contract.

The student protection part of this standard was concerned with how school privatization laws protected students. States lost 2 points if they had a voucher program that allowed discrimination based on religion or if LGBTQ students were not protected.

Conditions for Teaching and learning were valued at 24 points. States were evaluated on the existence of laws banning discrimination and if those laws protected all students. They also looked at student teacher ratios and corporal punishment rules. 

School funding was given a total of 16 points. It ranks statehouses based on how responsibly they fund public education — evaluating both the adequacy and equity of school financing — and on whether they pay teachers a living wage.

Protection for homeschooled students was given 4 points. The homeschooling segment is America’s fastest growing and some states do not require any homeschooling information. Most states with homeschooling rules require that schooling instructors have education qualifications but often that simply means possessing a GED. (NPE Report page 7)

Nebraska with 87.5 points and Vermont with 82 points were the only two states that scored more than 80 out of the 102 possible points. They were awarded an A. The B range was pegged between 64 and 79 points with 13 states in that range. Another 13 states with scores between 50 and 63 received a C. Six states with scores between 40 and 49 received a D and 17 states with scores below 40 were assigned F. Florida had America’s worst score at 14. (NPE Report page 9)

The NPE report lists state scores from highest to lowest in the following table. (NPE Report page 10)

An Observation from the Report

School choice programs generally increase segregation with vouchers enabling outright discrimination using public money. The publicly financed discrimination against gay students is difficult for me to understand. I grew up on a ranch in Idaho where we routinely had homosexual animals appear in our herds. This happened often enough that it was clearly not a rare event. I always believed that homosexuality amongst humans was naturally occurring and also not a rare event. So, when I see bullies or benighted people attacking the LGBTQ community, I am repulsed.

NPE highlighted Dayspring Christian Academy a voucher school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The school states it “retains the right to refuse enrollment to or to expel any student who engages in sexual immorality, including any student who professes to be homosexual/bisexual/transgender or is a practicing homosexual/bisexual/transgender, as well as any student who condones, supports, or otherwise promotes such practices (Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:27).” Not only are gay people discriminated against but anyone who does not join in the bigotry is also to be expelled. Remember, public tax dollars are paying for this. (NPE Report page 11)

I looked up their references and they both have similar wordings. Leviticus 20:13 says, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them has committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” This thousands of years old statement is meanspirited and heartless. Plus, I might point out, most gay men do not “lieth with a woman.” These ancient religious texts have symbolic value but should never be interpreted literally. It is sad that some Christians use the Bible as an excuse to discriminate and even worse that the public is forced to pay for it.

Conclusion

While it is true that the NPE report is awash in data and facts making it somewhat tedious to read, it is only 28 pages of statements and 16 pages of appendix. I encourage everyone to read it and see how far right-wing ideologues and their billionaire funders have come toward ending public education in America. It is a crisis that must be met or our democracy and the American way of life will be ended.

The report quotes Tiffany Justice, founder of Moms for Liberty, when a ProPublica reporter asked the then visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation what percentage of children should be in public schools? She replied:

“I hope to get to zero. If America’s public schools cease to exist tomorrow, America would be a better place.” (NPE Report page 6)

This is the position of the radical-right. Conservatives and liberals alike should be alarmed.

In 2009, Diane Ravitch finished writing her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. In it she discussed the “billionaires boys’ club.” On page 278 she states:

“Since I concluded my book in November 2009, I discovered that the billionaire boys’ club extends far beyond the big three foundations I wrote about in Chapter 10: Gates, Broad, and Walton. It includes super-rich individuals from Wall Street and the high-technology sector who have decided to have a go at reforming public education, …”

What most of us did not appreciate at the time is that what these ultra-wealthy were after was monetizing, privatizing and ending universal free public education.

In 2018, NPE held a convention in Indiana. Ravitch opened that gathering stating, ““We are the resistance and we are winning!” Teacher bloggers across the country were destroying the billionaires on social media and their education agendas were stymied. Then COVID happened. During that time Facebook made major changes to how it distributed posts. Soon bloggers like me who would have thousands of readers suddenly only had a few hundred. Many effective education bloggers just gave up.

Today, we have a billionaire President running the Heritage Foundations education agenda playbook. For the first time in American history the federal government in sponsoring vouchers and his billionaire secretary of education is dismantling the department. Public education is facing a crisis.

If you value democracy, community and public schools, it is time to go to the ramparts and fight off the “billionaire boys’ club.” 

ACT and SAT – Sophist Wastes

9 Jun

By Thomas Ultican 6/9/2026

STEM educators at the University of California (UC) are calling for re-implementing standardized testing for enrollment. This move would be great for the people cashing in on students and for maintaining elitism. However, it is financially harmful to families and undermines equity. Multiple research efforts show that high school transcripts and GPA (Grade Point Average) — which are not profit drivers — provide superior information to standardized testing.

In 2020, the UC system stopped requiring SAT or ACT testing data for enrollment. At the time both the LA Times and the San Diego Union posted articles opposing this move. The San Diego Union stated:

“UC admits students to campuses based on 14 criteria but bases systemwide eligibility on only two — test scores and high school grade point average. 
Looking at those two criteria, the task force found SAT scores to be a better predictor of UC performance than GPA because grading standards differ across schools and teachers.”

This finding of the University of California’s Task Force on Standardized Testing is surprising. Many studies have found the opposite. A 2014 study of 123,000 students sponsored by the National Association for College Admission Counseling was performed at 33 schools including Wake Forest, Bowdoin and Smith. The schools all made SAT or ACT test score submittals optional for student applicants. It is believed that those who did not reveal scores likely had significantly lower scores. However, the college GPAs and graduation rates were almost identical between the two groups. “Students with strong high school grades generally performed well in college despite poor test scores.”

A 2020 study of 55,000 Chicago public schools conducted by the University of Chicago found that GPA was a much better predicator of both freshman year grades and graduation rates compared to ACT testing. According to the lead author of the study, Elaine Allensworth:

“GPAs measure a very wide variety of skills and behaviors that are needed for success in college, where students will encounter widely varying content and expectations. In contrast, standardized tests measure only a small set of the skills that students need to succeed in college, and students can prepare for these tests in narrow ways that may not translate into better preparation to succeed in college.”

Similar research performed in 2022 at the University of Tennessee and another 2022 effort at the University of Iowa showed testing not to be as predictive as GPA. A faculty report at Purdue noted that SAT scores are really weak in predicting graduation and claimed if you added the other factors, they might even turn up negative. Jon Boeckenstedt, vice provost of Oregon State University, referred to admissions testing as pseudo-academic factors that add “almost nothing to an admission officer’s ability to predict an individual student’s academic performance in college.”

Berkley’s Saul Geiser wrote a paper explaining the error giving rise to the University of California Task Force’s surprising conclusion. The paper’s abstract states:

“One of the major claims of the report of University of California’s Task Force on Standardized Testing is that SAT and ACT scores are superior to high-school grades in predicting how students will perform at UC. This finding has been widely reported in the news media and cited in several editorials favoring UC’s continued use of SAT/ACT scores in university admissions. But the claim is spurious, the statistical artifact of a classic methodological error: omitted variable bias. Compared to high-school grades, SAT/ACT scores are much more strongly correlated with student demographics like family income, parental education, and race/ethnicity. As a result, when researchers omit student demographics in their prediction models, the predictive value of the tests is artificially inflated. When student demographics are included in the model, the findings are reversed: High-school grades in college-preparatory courses are actually the stronger predictor of UC student outcome.” (Emphasis Added)

Behind the Testing Advocacy

College Board reports that in 2024, 1.97 million students took the SAT. This was a 3% increase over 2023. That means that with just this one product they took in $100 million. They also sell test preparation materials and tutoring. Testing at this company is generating a large cash flow which pays many big salaries that are not counted as profits. So of course, companies like College Board like this business.

However, the reason for 600 stem educators in the UC system calling for testing to be resumed is not so obvious. Their joint letter stated, “An admissions process that ignores foundational readiness does a disservice to the most vulnerable students.” Berkeley math teacher Zvezda Stankova is noted as a lead organizer of the movement. She described a spring 2023 Calculus II class as being eye opening and stated:

“Something had changed drastically. The bottom was taken out, and there were 25 to 30% of the students who were in free fall. There was nothing you could do for them. They were just not prepared.”

If these students were in Calculus II, doesn’t that mean they passed a Calculus I class the previous fall at Berkeley? That indicates that either their Berkley teacher in the fall just passed them along or Stankova is a terrible educator. It does not indicate that their weakness was not discovered because they did not take the SAT.

The STEM faculty at University of California San Diego (UCSD) provided about 200 of the 600 signatures of UC faculty calling for the testing requirements to be reinstated for admission. The latest data provided by the UC system says that the new admits GPA at UCSD was greater than 4.11 and at Berkeley it was greater than 4.15. It is beyond my comprehension how students with this kind of success in high school are not succeeding.

Since high school grades are the gold standard predictor of success in college, the complaints of the UC educators make little sense.

Harry Feder Executive Director and Akil Bello Senior Director at Fairtest.org put together a report refuting the New York Times calling for a returned to mandatory SAT testing for college admissions. An early claim in their paper states:

“The SAT is an extraordinarily effective self-validation mechanism for an elitist ‘meritocracy’ to continue to perpetuate itself. It is designed to maintain the existing class structure.”

They conclude their report:

“[D]ata indicates requiring the test will turn away so many more otherwise qualified disadvantaged applicants. One can only conclude that the real motivators of the test requirement crowd are: a) keeping their alma maters “elite” (and all the coding that comes with that); b) enrollment management or c) economic self-interest.”

One of my favorite quotes about elites comes from Oregon States Jon Boeckenstedt:

“Maybe–just maybe–the term “elite” means “uncluttered by poor people.”  And maybe that’s the problem?”

Conclusion

I agree with Saul Geiser, former UC admissions official, when he stated that the SAT is “a poor fit for America’s public universities.”

I don’t believe this but maybe the COVID disruption in education caused some holes in the recent math students at these universities. It seems much more likely that there is a hidden agenda and these stellar students matriculating to the UC did not actually collapse.

I earned a mechanical engineering degree from San Diego State University and did graduate school at UCSD. After working in Silicon Valley, I returned to San Diego to become a teacher. I would be completely shocked if my top scoring AP physics students did not do well at a UC but I do know from my experience that lower-level math teachers at junior colleges have superior instructors to those I observed on a UC campus. Maybe the COVID disruption did more to harm teaching at the UC than it did to harm the performance newly admitted students.

Nobody disputes that the SAT does an excellent job correlating with family wealth but as the authors at Fairtest wrote, “The tests hurt the chances of far more poor and underrepresented students of talent than they help.”  When SAT and ACT data are compared to other application data, they are redundant and not predictive.

SAT and ACT testing are expensive and provide virtually no benefit to universities.

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Are the Falling NAEP Scores a Crisis?

19 May

By Thomas Ultican 5/19/2026

Recently both the New York Times and the billionaire propaganda rag ‘The 74’ ran articles about the National Assessment of Education Progress’s (NAEP) declining scores. For more than a decade reading and math scores have been declining and the authors of both articles postulated that the cause is either social media or the demise of test and punish federal education policy or both. This view was originally put forward this May in a report from the Education Recovery Scorecard titled “From Education Recession to Education Recovery.” Neither proffered answer is likely a bullseye and the falling scores are less meaningful than they appear.

Calling it an “education recession” is a red hearing. Professor Paul Thomas called it “yet another oversell.” This verbiage is an attack on public education and indicates this is not a serious study.

NAEP is often called the national education report card, but it suffers from the common affliction of standardized testing. For years, anyone paying close attention has known that education testing operates in such a noisy arena that it cannot reliably identify good schools or teachers. The only student variable correlated with higher test results is family wealth. When statistical studies of standardized testing data are made, there is only one factor that has an r-value greater the 0.3 (weakly correlated) and that is family wealth which has an r-value of 0.9 (highly correlated).

People and organizations the report cites for various kinds of help taint this work. They include Brown University economist Emily Oster who gained notoriety for her call to put the kids back in school at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020. She was followed by Josh Bleiberg of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education and Nate Mulkus from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The Carnegie Foundation of New York, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Joyce Foundation and the Gates Foundation were all thanked for funding.

These supporters and contributors have a history of promoting NCLB style testing oversight and punishment. In 2014, The Washington Post wrote that under CEO Arthur Brooks, AEI had emerged as “the dominant conservative think tank,” becoming more influential than the Heritage Foundation. Over at Media Bias – Fact Check, they rate AEI as having a right bias and medium credibility. Tim Knowles at Carnegie Corporation has been working to replace public schools with students at computer terminals earning proof of skills badges. Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Joyce Foundation and the Gates Foundation all supported NCLB and school privatization.

NCLB and The Test Score Decline

Whan NCLB first arrived, there were no consequences but by 2005 schools were being threatened with shutdown and having all of the staff fired. As the threats became real and schools were shuttered (all in poverty areas because poor students had poor test results) school administrators and teachers started desperately trying to save their jobs and schools. By 2010, curriculum had been narrowed significantly and there was test prep going on throughout the school year and within a few weeks of the testing window, all students started taking practice tests.

A dive into how test results were being evaluated, revealed students who had just barely failed on previous exams were the best target for score improvements. These students were often pulled out of regular classes to participate in special test preparation classes. It had nothing to do with helping them but was solely to save the school and jobs.

Schools held assemblies to pump the kids up to do well on the tests. The high school kids knew that the testing meant nothing to them and were much harder to motivate. 

One major issue with NCLB testing was escalating passing scores became impossible to achieve. In fact, by 2014, the law required 100% of all students to be proficient which was a statistical impossibility. This ludicrous requirement brought the whole thing down when wealthy neighborhoods started having their schools threatened.

Test preparation did bring higher scores but undermined authentic education.

The Obama administration was force to give schools across the country waivers and on December 10, 2015, NCLB was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act. Removing the draconian NCLB rules meant schools could concentrate more on education than testing.

As a result, test preparation reduced significantly and authentic education was enhanced. I believe this is the major driver of today’s falling test scores and is clearly a good thing.

Social Media Not Likely the Villain

Smartphones are ubiquitous from middle school on. However, as a teacher, I did not experience a big problem with them in class. Because my classroom was also a science lab with many electrical outlets, sometimes I would have a dozen phones charging during class. From time-to-time students would look at their phones but a simple reminder from me was all it took for the phone to be put away. Of all class disruptions, I found smartphones a minor problem.

The National Bureau of Economic Research studied the of effect of smartphones on students. They concluded, “For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero.” 

The big problem I saw undermining student learning was the internet. I taught math and science. By 2013, almost every physics and chemistry problem was on the internet as were step by step solutions to all math problems. To learn math, physics or chemistry students need to struggle with solving problems. With the answers and solution steps on line, striving to learn was severely undermined. I was receiving the most beautifully written homework assignments I had ever seen followed by declining test scores.

My school district bought every student an I-pad and then replaced those with Google laptops. Most veteran teachers were having students store these devices under their desks or in backpacks during class. They were giant distractions that in total were a waste of money but teachers found a work around.

Propaganda Not Reporting

The New York Times article was sort of balanced but they reported the Education Recovery Scorecard report with no push-back. One of their first quotes came from AEI’s Matt Mulkus who stridently claimed, “I cannot be more emphatic: This is an enormous problem that’s not getting enough attention.” And the Times does not provide any counter to this statement or question the report’s use of “education recession” in its loaded title. However, compared to ‘The 74’ their article is very reasonable.

In its lead sentence, ‘The 74’ states, “The United States entered a “learning recession” in 2013 that it has struggled mightily — and thus far ineffectively — to escape, according to a report unveiled Wednesday by a group of respected social scientists.” Nothing in this statement is supported or fair, but that is the way billionaire funded propaganda functions.

Harvard economics professor, Thomas Kane, one of the creators of Scorecard, is paraphrased, “student achievement illustrates not merely the enormity of the loss, but also the impressive progress that preceded it.” If there is any real loss it is certainly not enormous.

Another quoted expert is Doug Lemov, former charter school teacher and administrator, who wrote the TFA training guide Teach Like a Champion. ‘The 74’ claims Lemov’s book is a “reference text for educators around the world.” Outside of the privatized charter industry, I am not aware of any schools using Lemov’s book.

Most trained professional educators find his teaching theories regressive. Jennifer Berkshire published a post by Layla Treuhaft-Ali under the title “Teach Like its 1885.” Layla wrote, “Placed in their proper racial context, the Teach Like A Champion techniques can read like a modern-day version of the Hampton Idea, where children of color are taught not to challenge authority under the supervision of a wealthy, white elite.”

So here it is. A phony study financed by billionaires is reported to the public by the New York Time and the billionaire propaganda rag ‘The 74’. The reality is decreasing test scores do not indicate much and certainly not an “education recession.” This is simply another billionaire financed attack on public education.

Education Privatization Propaganda Worsening

4 May

By Thomas Ultican 5/4/5026

‘The 74’ was created by billionaires in 2015 to accelerate privatizing public education. Lately, wealthy people have been buying established media with excellent reputations. These acquired media of course do not exclusively concentrated on education like ‘The 74’ but they do cover it. Last November, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined Democrats for Education Reform (DEFR) President, Jorge Elorza, to write an opinion piece in multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post. It promoted Trump’s new voucher program and on April 30th, ‘The 74’ carried an interview with Duncan also promoting that same legislation.

In the last 100 years, the two main groups championing vouchers are the super wealthy and racists not wanting their children in school with “those people.” The late John Walton of the Walmart clan — the richest family in the world — campaigned continuously for vouchers but every time he got them on a ballot the public rejected them. Vouchers have still never won a public vote. After Brown vs the board of education in 1954, southern states enacted vouchers to create schools for white kids only.

In 2025, the most corrupt President in the history of the United States pushed through his “Big Ugly Bill.” Its tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are paid for by reducing social services and significantly lowering support for medical costs. Lurking in the bill was also the Heritage foundation’s attack on public education know as “tax-credit scholarships.” It is the first ever federal education voucher program which caused Betty Pringle, President of the National Education Association, to declare, “This bill will devastate our schools and communities—all to finance massive tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.”

Sadly, America truly has become the land of billionaires against workers.

Voucher Support is NOT about Better Education

In a Time magazine article, Professor Josh Cowen wrote:

“Although small, pilot-phase programs showed some promise two decades ago, new evaluations of vouchers in Washington, D.C., Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio show some of the largest test score drops ever seen in the research record—between -0.15 and -0.50 standard deviations of learning loss. That’s on par with what the COVID-19 pandemic did to test scores, and larger than Hurricane Katrina’s impacts on academics in New Orleans.”

“Although small, pilot-phase programs showed some promise two decades ago, new evaluations of vouchers in Washington, D.C., Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio show some of the largest test score drops ever seen in the research record—between -0.15 and -0.50 standard deviations of learning loss. That’s on par with what the COVID-19 pandemic did to test scores, and larger than Hurricane Katrina’s impacts on academics in New Orleans.”

In a lame attempt to refute this data, Corey DeAngelis of the University of Arkansas complained that the Indiana study was non-experimental, as it compared voucher students to those remaining in traditional public schools. Because of the difficulties in creating experimentally designed voucher studies only the DC study was experimental and it is not likely to be repeated.

In looking at the DC voucher study, the Center for American Progress published “The Highly Negative Impacts of Vouchers” by Ulrich Boser, Meg Benner, and Erin Roth. The Introduction to their study states:

“How bad are school vouchers for students? Far worse than most people imagine. Indeed, according to the analysis conducted by the authors of this report, the use of school vouchers! — which provide families with public dollars to spend on private schools! — is equivalent to missing out on more than one-third of a year of classroom learning. In other words, this analysis found that the overall effect of the D.C. voucher program on students is the same as missing 68 days of school.”

Clearly, public policy supporting vouchers to improve education is untenable. So why are billionaires like Trump, DeVos, Koch, Dunn, and others campaigning to institute education vouchers? Koch and Trump seem to believe that they should not pay taxes in support of people who need to pay their own way and see vouchers as a path to ending publicly supported schools. People like DeVos and Dunn are Christian nationalists who believe America belongs to Christians and non-Christian are not real Americans. To them, public education is a non-Christian religion competing with Christianity.

Selling Rich Guy Propaganda

In March, Arne Duncan signed on as a senior fellow for DEFR and claims to have been on four or five panels at the annual ASU+GSV conference. The ASU+GSV yearly gathering is where titans of the digital universe gather to discuss how to end public schools and replace them with “Skills-Based Credentialing.” Forbes magazine called the conference “the Davos of Education.” They are calling for replacing grade level classes by putting children and also adults at computer screens earning credentials as America’s primary mode of education.

 In her book Slaying Goliath Diane Ravitch described the formation of DFER:

“In 2005, several hedge fund managers – Witney Tilson, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, John Petry and Charles Ledley – launched Democrats for Education Reform at a posh party on Central Park South in Manhattan, where the inaugural speaker was a young senator from Illinois named Barack Obama. DEFR, as it is deceptively called, was founded to support school privatization by making strategic campaign contributions. Inspired by DFER, charter schools became the pet passion of Wall Street.” (Page 38)

As a new fellow at DEFR, Arne Duncan is still selling the spoiled milk of his days as Obama’s Secretary of Education. When George W. Bush made test-based accountability central to evaluating the nation’s schools plus narrowed their scope to math and English, a major consequence was the destruction of wonderful schools in poor communities. Despite the growing evidence that test-based accountability was harming public education, Duncan became a big proponent of evaluating schools with standardized testing. Today, that is still the method he uses to judge schools.

His argument for why Democrats should embrace Trump’s voucher program is based primarily on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) testing declines since 2013. Duncan says, “You saw last year’s NAEP results, which were devastating, but I just don’t see the sense of urgency out there.” It is not in his economic interest to notice that the first few years of testing saw dramatic growth in scores as schools learned to take the exams and then hit a pinnacle during his leadership. As the narrow and punish theory of education was enhanced, as he pushed education technology and as the science of reading was supported by billionaires, NAEP scores started slowly declining.

The 2024 NAEP results are nothing to celebrate but certainly are not a crisis. Since the 2019 testing window, all schools experienced a major COVID-19 disruption and in its aftermath a serious spate of absenteeism arose. Even Duncan noted, “I think the chronic absenteeism rate in Chicago is 41%; just think of four out of 10 kids missing a month or more of school every year!” Since the 2013 all-time high average NAEP scores for 4th grade reading of 222, the average score has dropped to 215 or by 7 points. Likewise, 4th grade math average has dropped 5 points, 8th grade reading has dropped 10 points and 8th grade math dropped 11 points.

With average scores of well over 200 points, these drops are not large but do seem to indicate a problem. However, many people believe standardized testing is not actually useful for measuring learning because of the large amount of error inherent in education testing. The only known factor well correlated to NAEP outcomes is family income, the wealthier the family, the higher the score. Duncan’s claim that the latest NAEP testing results are “devastating” is laughable.

Opinion

Almost 20 years ago, Rupert Murdock noted, “When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the US alone …” For more than thirty years, extremely wealthy people, after those billions of education dollars, have been spending to privatize and undermine public education. They have created phony think tanks, phony graduate schools and propaganda based media. Vouchers are a major tool for destroying the public system. Vouchers remove funds from public schools and the authors of voucher-legislation work to insure they are given as little oversight as possible. Billionaires like the President of the United States do not care about people not in their social circles. They are what Minnesota Governor Tim Walz calls, “greedy bastards.” 

Homophobic President Attacks Transgender Students

5 Feb

By Thomas Ultican 2/5/2026  

With our lying President, we don’t know if he is actually a homophobe or just plays one on TV. His Department of Education recently reported finding San Jose State University violated Title IX regarding a transgender volleyball player. The transgender player, Blaire Fleming, was on the San José State roster for three seasons after transferring from Coastal Carolina. Her status as transgender apparently became known when Southern Utah forfeited its match against San Jose State in September, 2024. It was Flemming’s third year on the team.

Shortly after this came to light, San Jose State co-captain Brooke Slusser and two former Spartans were incensed by the new knowledge about Fleming and sued the Mountain West Conference over its policies they claim muzzled them. While Slusser was the central figure among the three players that were outraged, it is very likely that a lot of that outrage was fueled by Brooke’s Christian Nationalist mother, Kim Slusser.

A dive into Kim’s Facebook page, shows that she is much more focused on being a mom supporting her kids than she is politics. However, she did recently post to Facebook “Let’s go Leigh Wambsganss for Texas Senate.” Leigh is the wife of a former Southlake mayor, co-founder of Southlake Family PAC and Leader of a Patriots Mobil PAC designed to take over public schools. Mike Hixenbaugh quoted Wambsganss in his book They Came for the Schools:

“… Leigh Wambsganas … said there was no hope of changing the minds of any Black Lives Matter activists. ‘Sadly, they need to die.’” (Pages 108 and179)

Besides politically supporting crazed right-wing religious zealots, Kim Slusser also posted a graphic encouraging people to listen to the Megyn Kelly show.

A Post in Kim Slusser’s Facebook

The President’s attack on transgender people is fueled by bigoted ideology.

Transgender Reality

A 2022 study by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute shared that of the 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender, 38.5% (515,200) are transgender women, 35.9% (480,000) are transgender men, and 25.6% (341,800) reported they are gender nonconforming. The LGBTQIA WIKI defines gender nonconforming:

“Gender non-conforming is a term describing people who do not follow gender stereotypes and differ from their society’s conventional binary expectations of masculine men and feminine women. Gender non-conformity can encompass many things, such as gender expression, gender roles, or another aspect of gender. It is typically apparent in people whose gender identity is a binary gender, whether they are cisgender or transgender; for instance, a feminine trans man and a feminine cis man are both non-conforming with expectations of masculinity.”

From the 2022 study cited above, about 700,000 transgender people are between 13 and 24. Extrapolating from these numbers, I would expect less than 400,000 of them to be transgender women. It is a small but not insignificant number of people considering that there are about 350 million people in America.

The bottom line is that a small subset of human beings is born with gender-dysphoria, a mismatch between gender identity and their own personal sense of gender. Scientific American reported almost all major American medical groups have “policy statements and guidelines on how to provide age-appropriate gender-affirming care” and “find such care to be evidence-based and medically necessary.”

Columbia University Psychiatry reports:

“It is well documented that TGNB [transgender non-binary] adolescents and young adults experience anxiety and depression, as well as suicidal ideation, at a much higher rate than their cisgender peers. According to The Trevor Project’s 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, 54 percent of young people who identified as transgender or nonbinary reported having seriously considered suicide in the last year, and 29 percent have made an attempt to end their lives.”

Both homosexuality and gender dysphoria are naturally occurring phenomena. They are not a mistake and they are human beings worthy of maximum respect.

The PBS article “Why is the GOP Escalating Attacks on Trans Rights? Experts say the Goal is to make sure Evangelicals Vote” reports that “Survey after survey show that Americans support LGBTQ+ equality, and Republicans are no exception.” When Donald Trump first ran for office, he briefly vowed to be an ally to queer Americans. “In office, his administration made so many policy moves against LGBTQ+ Americans that advocacy organizations branded his leadership ‘The Discrimination Administration.”’

Even though the Evangelical community is a minority in the Republican Party, their strong unity on cultural issues has made them a must get for victorious GOP candidates. Our President quickly realized he needed them and apparently had no problem abandoning his vow to be an ally to queer Americans.

Respecting Life and Protecting People

Sixteen-years-old trans-student, Nex Benedict, was attacked in the girl’s bathroom at her Oklahoma high school. The attack was severe enough to require some medical attention, but she was well enough to go home that night. The next day she committed suicide. Caught in a web of ignorance and bigotry she was convinced that life was not worth living. She would be about the same age as San Jose State’s volleyball player, Blaire Fleming, if she had lived until today.

A new law, that took effect January 2025 in California, says teachers, counselors and schools are not to disclose a student’s apparent gender-dysphoria to parents without the student’s permission. The arguments in the Bill noted, “Unfortunately, not all young people are able to be their authentic selves at home safely, and, in those cases, schools can be a critical source of support.” It also highlighted the large tendency for trans students like Nex Benedict to engage in suicide. The bill claimed that students with “access to affirming homes, schools, community events, and online spaces reported lower rates of attempting suicide.”

The same January that the California bill was signed, President Trump signed many executive orders including:

“This executive order directs federal agencies and federal employees to interpret “sex” solely as an immutable binary biological classification determined at conception. The order also requires all federal agencies to enforce sex-based rights, protections and accommodations using this definition of “sex.”

A few months before Trump became President, a symposium organized by the National Human Genome Research Institute, an institute of the US National Institutes of Health completely rejected the Trumpian view. “Throughout the symposium, many speakers argued that any attempt to categorize sex runs into the same issue—human variation always provides an exception to the rule.”

An interesting case was presented by Physician Tucker Pyle, from Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. A person who was born in the 1980s was raised as a girl but felt like a boy. As a teenager, the patient received feminizing hormones but still experienced dysphoria. Years later, he learned doctors performed surgery on him as a baby to make his genitalia, which weren’t clearly a penis or a vulva, look like a vulva. But he ultimately identified as male and socially and hormonally transitioned.

A Personal Opinion

In a dialogue with youth, Daisaku Ikeda said:

“Everyone has a right to flower, to reveal his or her full potential as a human being, to fulfill his or her mission in this world. You have this right and so does everyone else. To scorn and violate people’s human rights destroys the natural order of things. We must become people who prize human rights and respect others.” (Faith into Action page 276)

This current attack on gay people is evil. Some gay people are not the sharpest tool in the woodshed and some are possessed of brilliance, but more importantly they are all human beings with a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They all deserve respect.

I think trans kids in sports is a made-up issue. Participating in sports with their preferred gender should be accommodated. There are more gender nonconforming females whose male side leads to sporting victories than any unfairness caused by the few transgender participants.

Should someone disagree with this position, we should listen if they have valid points. However, I do not think transgender athletes are the problem that needs reforming.

It is benighted bigots who must be reformed; whose ideology must be shunned.

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Charter Schools in a Racist Big Easy

8 Dec

By Thomas Ultican 12/8/2025

New Orleans was the site of the largest slave market in America. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, more than 135,000 slaves were purchased in the Big Easy. This racist legacy has survived up until today in many of its White citizens, business leaders and politicians. The book William Frantz Public School states, “By the 1920s, Orleans Parish School Board members and district administrators vehemently voiced their belief that White supremacy should guide public policy and stated their willingness to employ any means, including the use of force, to maintain inequality between the two races.” (William Frantz Page 4) After the Supreme Court’s Brown decision, long-time state senator William Rainach headed a strategy committee that condemned integration as the work of communists and created the all-White Louisiana’s Citizens’ Councils (Overturning Brown page 34). Leading up to hurricane Katrina, many White citizens continued working to maintain the ideal of White supremacy.   

This summer, Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance (ERA) created and published “The New Orleans Post-Katrina School Reforms: 20 Years of Lessons.” This report was published June 2, 2025 by authors Douglas Harris and Jamie Carroll. In an alliance with Network for Public Education (NPE), Kristen Buras PhD, who has been studying New Orleans schools since the hurricane, wrote a paper countering many of the claims made in the ERA paper.

There is reason to believe the two ERA writers are incapable of doing unbiased research in the education realm.

In 2023, Diane Ravitch disclosed that while serving as Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos gave $10 million to establish a research center on school choice. The longtime advocate of school choice was not apt to give the money to academics likely to throw cold water on her life’s work. The grant went to Tulane University in the only American city that has no public schools. Ravitch noted, “The organization she funded is called the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH), led by economist Douglas Harris.”

Jamie Carrol who attended an all-girls high school in Maryland was a Teach for America (TFA) teacher 2008-2010 in New Orleans. She went on to earn a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Texas. Today, she works as a researcher for Betsy DeVos’s REACH.

In her Paper, “The Stories Behind the Statistics: Why a Report on “Large Achievement Gains” in Charter Schools Harms New Orleans’ Black Students”, Kristen Buras shares that the amazingly pro-charter school Arnold Foundation has spent lavishly to advance charter schools in New Orleans; in 2012 $15 million for “education reform” in New Orleans, then another $25 million to be managed by the Charter School Growth fund and New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO), and 2014-2017 grants to Tulane University and ERA of more than $5 million. Buras comments, “Grants from this consistently pro-charter foundation helped launch and sustain ERA’s work.”  (Buras Page 17) 

Recently, two of America’s most active funders of charter schools awarded nearly $1 Million to REACH: the Walton Foundation and the City Fund (Buras Page 18). The Walton family, who owns Walmart, is the wealthiest family in the world and the largest private funder of charter schools in the US. The City Fund was created by billionaires Reed Hastings and John Arnold. They each put in $100 million to create an organization specifically for spurring the spread of charter schools.

Do Not be Naïve

Even before hurricane Katrina, there were efforts for the state to take over New Orleans’s public schools. Tulane University President Scott Cowen was quite influential in the development of the state of Louisiana’s education policies. In 2003, Cowen was involved in the creation of the Recovery School District (RSD) that was to take control over “failing schools” in New Orleans and reform them. After Katrina, Cowen headed the education committee of Mayor Nagin’s Bring Back New Orleans Commission. In early 2006, Cowen’s committee released a report recommending that New Orleans become the nation’s first all-charter school district (Buras Page 18). 

Scott Cowen established Tulane University’s Cowen Institute, a predecessor of ERA. Buras reported on conducting interviews with Cowen’s staff in 2009 noting:

“I asked about the institute’s mission. Like ERA, they characterized their work as neutral. One staff member shared: ‘We don’t advocate for an all-charter system because we don’t feel there’s adequate research [at this point] to indicate that charters will outperform non-charters.’ Instead, the staff portrayed the Cowen Institute as an ‘honest broker’ and ‘objective observer.’ Yet, NSNO, TFA, and other pro-charter school groups were given free office space in the same suite as the Cowen Institute.” (Buras Page 18)

To this day, ERA shares office space on the seventh floor of 1555 Poydras Street with NSNO.

Since its inception, NSNO has been all about building the all-charter school system in New Orleans. A peak at their tax records (EIN: 02-0773717) shows Neerav Kinsland appearing on the board in 2010 and earning $117,000 as chief of strategy. In 2011 he became CEO earning $146,000 and over the next two years he was paid $207,000 and $223,000 as CEO. But that wasn’t good enough. Since then, he has worked for billionaires John Arnold and Reed Hastings, served on the California Charter School Association board and is now leading the City Fund.

After Katrina, Black teachers decreased from 71% in 2005 to 49% in 2014, then rose to 56% in recent years. They were paid less than white counterparts in the same teaching and administrative positions (Buras Page 13). Experienced Black teachers were replaced by mostly White college graduates from TFA with just 5 weeks of training as an educator.

Students in the Big Easy are forced to take long bus rides often past, within walking distance neighborhood schools, to get their assigned charter school. It is not unusual for them to soon be traumatized by one of New Orleans multiple school closures. Somehow, white children in New Orleans rarely experience school closures.

Ashana Bigard shared in her book “Beyond Resilience Katrina 20” about the racist enrollment process in the all-charter school system. To enroll children, parents must use OneApp. It runs the school choice algorithm but strangely only white children get into the best schools, not even if you’re a Black family in the upper middle class do you get a seat. It is common to see White people move to the city and magically get their children into schools with 100 children on the waiting list. Ashana notes, “They didn’t even know the school existed prior to moving to the city, but racism and classism still existed heavily within the new system.” (Bigard Page 268)

Cheating Charters

The state cheated to create the conditions for developing the all-charter school system. Before Katrina, the cut point for school failure was 60 on a 200-point scale. After Katrina, through Act 35, the state legislature raised the cut point to 87.4, which was just below the state average. This maximized the number of public schools that the RSD could seize. Then, as charter schools were opened, the cut point for failure was lowered back to 60 (Buras Page 19).

The Times-Picayune reported that “data published by the Louisiana Department of Education vastly underreported the number of expulsions in charter schools.” For the 2007-2008 period, state data from a sample of 19 RSD charter schools listed only 4 students as having been expelled. The Lafayette Academy admitted to the Times-Picayune that 14 students were expelled that year; the state reported zero for Lafayette. (Buras Page 16)

In 2011-2012, 34% of schools in New Orleans had an out of school suspension (OSS) rate at or above 20%. Since 2009, charter schools have suspended students at rates sometimes double and triple the state average which was not that great to begin with. (Buras Page 15)

In 2015, SciTech Academy allowed students to take tests for one another, at home or multiple times (Buras Page 21).

Students coded as “transferred out of state” are excluded from the state’s metric. The inordinate use of the out of state code by charters seemed to be masking the true dropout figures which improved their state ratings (Buras Page 21).

At Landry-Walker, 78% of students scored “good” or “excellent” on the biology EOC and 78% on the geometry EOC. Only “good” or “excellent” scores earn points on the state’s metric. Yet, 52 of the 257 students who scored “good” or “excellent” on the EOC exam received a D or F in the class. By 2017, the Louisiana inspector general’s office had uncovered enough evidence of criminal wrongdoing at Landry-Walker that the local district attorney was alerted (Buras Page 21).

In her report, Buras says these are likely just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to charter school test cheating. Yet these inflated scores and school ratings are used by ERA to claim good academic results in New Orleans’s charter system. The willingness to ignore the cheating problem is appalling.

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Christian Nationalists and Texas Public Schools

26 Oct

By Thomas Ultican 10/26/2025

In September, the fifth largest school district in Texas, Fort Worth Independent School District (FWISD), adopted Bluebonnet Learning’s program of instruction. Three of the nine board trustees voted against the adoption, calling it “state-sanctioned indoctrination.”  Their concerns were well founded.

Bluebonnet uses Biblical passages in its lessons. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) contracted with Public Consulting Group in Boston to create the new curriculum. Public Consulting Group subcontracted with curriculum writers including Texas Public Policy Foundation, with radical Christian nationalist billionaire Tim Dunn serving as vice president on its board, and Hillsdale College, a rightwing Christian college and charter school organization from Michigan.  TEA also hired a conservative educational publishing company co-founded by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to provide content for the state’s proposed program. But so far, the state has refused to identify the authors who transformed Amplify’s program into the Bible infused Bluebonnet curriculum.

TEA has made adopting Bluebonnet attractive. FWISD estimates that implementing Bluebonnet will cost nearly $2.4 million, however, TEA is providing $60 for every enrolled student so the districts expects to receive $4 million from the state. In addition, the Amplify reading lessons required staff to create content, but Bluebonnet creates the content for them.

Many people believe the real reason FWISD adopted Bluebonnet’s lessons is an attempt to placate Mike Morath, TEA commissioner of education. One of FWISD’s schools, Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade, failed the Texas Starr Testing for a fifth straight year. This triggered a state law requiring Morath to take some form of action. His options include taking over the district and replacing its elected leaders.

Reverend Mary Spradlin of Pastors for Texas Children said the adoption of Bluebonnet looked like a move by the district to placate TEA Commissioner Mike Morath. She added, “If you feel like you must adopt it to avoid a takeover, we’ve already lost control.” Reed Biltz, governance chair of the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County, also opposed the adoption saying it looks like taking a bribe from TEA. Bilz noted, “The league opposes threats to basic constitutional rights.”

TEA Strips Democratic Rights in Fort Worth

Today’s (10/23/2025) Fort Worth Report announced, “Fort Worth ISD’s nine locally elected trustees are out as Texas officials stepped in Thursday after years of poor student outcomes.” Whether you believe FWISD Superintendent Karen Molinar’s claim that adopting Bluebonnet had nothing to do with a threatened state takeover or believe the opposite claims, it makes little difference now. The Report headline reads, “Texas takes control of FWISD in state’s second-largest public school intervention.”

Morath wrote, “Since the campus earned its fifth consecutive unacceptable academic rating in that year, the school’s subsequent closure has no bearing on, and does not abrogate, the compulsory action the statute requires the commissioner to take.” The commissioner was not required to get rid of the elected school board; that was his choice.

This is the same reason that the Houston ISD was taken over. One school in a high poverty community did not reach the designated cut scores on Texas Starr testing five years in a row.

Like all standardized testing, the Starr results only correlate strongly with family wealth. In FWISD, 85% of the students are either Black or Hispanic with 83% listed as economically disadvantaged. In Texas, this kind of data means a community’s democratic right to elect their school leaders will likely be stripped. Now the state’s largest and fifth largest school districts, which are in heavily democratic communities, have been taken over by the Christian nationalist running TEA.

Besides creating Bluebonnet, Texas political leaders are taking other measures to force Christianity into public schools. New state laws require displaying the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in all classrooms. Gov. Greg Abbott also signed legislation in June that allows districts to offer a daily, voluntary period of time to pray and read the Bible or other religious texts. A 2023 law allows districts to hire chaplains as counselors.

Why has driving Protestantism into public schools become a state agenda?

Billionaire Dollars Driving Christian Nationalism

A year ago, Propublica published “A Pair of Billionaire Preachers Built the Most Powerful Political Machine in Texas. That’s Just the Start.” The article begins by telling the story of former Texas state representative Glenn Rogers. It would be hard to imagine a more conservative legislator, but he got crosswise with Billionaire oilmen and hardcore Christian nationalists Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. Rogers believes two of his votes caused the problem. He voted against vouchers and voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of their most powerful allies.

In 2023, Hours before the Texas House overwhelmingly voted to impeach Ken Paxton in May, a well-funded supporter of the attorney general issued a threat to his fellow Republicans. A vote to impeach Paxton, Jonathan Stickland wrote on Twitter, “is a decision to have a primary.”

Stickland was the leader of Defend Texas Liberty, a political action committee that has donated millions of dollars to far-right candidates in the state. It is a key part of the constellation of political campaigns, institutions and dark-money groups that West Texas oil tycoons, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, have lavishly financed in their long-term crusade to push Texas to the extreme right. KSAT in San Antonio claims, “Over the past 20 years, Dunn and the Wilks brothers have sunk nearly $100 million into a sprawling mix of nonprofits, political campaigns, think tanks, fundraising committees and websites to advance their far-right religious, economic and anti-LGBTQ+ views.”

In October 2023, the Texas Tribune wrote, “Nick Fuentes is just the latest white supremacist embraced by Defend Texas Liberty.” The meeting between Defend Texas Liberty’s Jonathan Strickland and the pro-Nazi Fuentes caused such a backlash that Strickland was removed from his post. The political foes of Dunn and Wilks believed this issue would finally undermine their political juggernaut.

Instead, in 2024, Dunn and Wilks materialized large victories everywhere and grew stronger than ever. They defeated long time political foes and set their allies up to take over the state Legislature. According to KSAT, they left no doubt “as to who is winning a vicious civil war to control the state party.”

Too Much Money in Too Few Hands

This year, Texas Republicans finally forced vouchers onto a public that did not want them. In addition to the Christian nationalist money, Jeff Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania, spent heavily to make vouchers a reality in Texas. Yass is a Jewish boy from the Bronx who co-founded Susquehanna, now a giant options trading and market making company. In the last year, according to Forbes, his net value has more than doubled from $27.6 billion to $59 billion.

Yass and his wife believe in school choice and that is their right. However, their unbelievably large fortune makes their opinion so much more important than those of the rest of us. It is the same with politics in Texas. Dunn and Wilks have such large fortunes they swamp the public’s will. Their lavish spending for Christian nationalism and Jesus in politics is overwhelming the majority of Texans.

This article provides one more piece of evidence making it clear something must be done about the growing menace of oligarchs in America. We need some sort of redistribution of assets in the United States and much higher taxes on the wealthy. The state of economic inequity is a major outcome of the Reagan revolution and it is destroying our democracy.

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Nichiren and the Opening of the Eyes

18 May

By Thomas Ultican 5/18/2025

My just published book, Nichiren and the Opening of the Eyes, is probably a bit of a surprise for public education advocates. For the past 15-years, I have been one of the loudest voices fighting against the demise of taxpayer funded free universal public schooling. However, long before I became an education advocate, I embraced Nichiren’s philosophy.

Strangely enough, I have been working on this book the entire time that I have been an outspoken advocate for public education.

The first paragraph of the book’s introduction shares:

“In February 1969, I was walking down Broadway in San Diego, California when a Japanese woman approached me. She spoke almost no English, but I understood her to say, “World Tribune; Buddhist discussion meeting; you go.” That was my first encounter with Nichiren and his declaration that chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo opened the path to Buddhahood, personal happiness, and world harmony.“

In 1969, I was not the only one who had never heard of Nichiren Buddhism. Scholar Daniel Montgomery reported that in the 1930s, a Japanese monk chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo while his new friend Gandhi beat a chanting drum. Montgomery also stated that many self-help and new-age religious movements teach ideas that originated with Nichiren, but they often do not know the source.

My book is a biography of this 13th century Japanese monk whose tale rivals that of any historical figure. He came close to a violent end at least four times while spreading his message of Buddhist reform and human salvation. Living in a samurai-dominated society, this oracle once had an astronomical event save him from the executioner’s sword.

This is the most comprehensive biography of Nichiren ever produced in English.

I traced the life of a boy from his humble fishing village to his establishing what has become a world religion, now known as Nichiren Buddhism. Such a large percentage of the Japanese population started following Nichiren that rival Buddhist sects and governing authorities went to extraordinary lengths to thwart him.

In 13th century Japan, Nichiren joined Esai, Hōnen, Shinran and Dōgen as founders of new sectarian movements. Esai and Dogen established, respectively, Rinzan Zen and Sōtō Zen. Hōnen founded the Pure Land Sect and Shinran, the True Pure Land Sect. These schools founded by the five Buddhist monks, known as the “Kamakura reformers,” survived throughout the past 800 years.

Today, it is only Nichiren’s teachings that have moved past just surviving to stunning worldwide growth.

His philosophy was suppressed after he died, but along with all other Buddhist schools allowed to propagate with the advent of Meiji Imperialism in 1868.

Nichiren was a forward-thinking man with surprisingly modern views. It is remarkable to discover that many of this Dark Ages’ Japanese monk’s most important disciples were female, in a time when women were treated like property. He accepted the equality of the sexes as common sense and accorded women a respect equal to that given his male followers.

Nichiren was a prolific writer and his disciples went to considerable lengths to preserve his messages. Today, over four hundred of his letters and treatise are extant, including 146 in his own hand.  These were the backbone documentation for this project.

After 15-years, the book has finally arrived.

A Personal Journey

A press release referred to me as a veteran student of the Soka Gakkai indicating my background in Buddhist study. They asked, “How did a guy who grew up on a ranch in Idaho become a Buddhist?”

I was a 19 year-old sailor just returned to San Diego from a 9-month Southeast Asia tour on a Destroyer. We mostly worked in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of Viet Nam. When walking past a small long-gone downtown park, Horton Plaza, I encountered the Japanese woman mentioned above. I was a little interested and too young to go to the bars, so I went with her. We arrived at a small former church where I met a guy who told me that by chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo he was able to get a driver’s license in spite of five drunken driving charges. At the time, I was thinking this does not sound like a good thing.

The timing was right for me. Most of my buddies from the ship were over 21 and out in the bars doing the kind of sailor things we used to do together in the Philippines, so I would go to that little church and hangout. I was pretty sure it was a cult but was inexpensive and friendly. Every night the members would chant for about an hour to be successful. I thought chanting was fun and would join in. It turns out that anyone who chants Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo for any reason will start experiencing its power.

That is how I became a Buddhist. I was having great luck finding parking spots and getting green lights. More importantly, I was struck by the sincerity of the local members.

Since that time, I have had many much more profound and eye opening personal experiences but those early parking spots near the main entrance at the 32nd street naval station were important for my Buddhist journey.

Motivating the Writing

In 2010, I was reading an article by our international president, Daisaku Ikeda, in the SGI-USA publication, World Tribune. Ikeda, who I viewed as my teacher, encouraged all youth division members to write about Nichiren Buddhism. I decided since I was only 60 that I qualified as a youth and would work on a paper about Nichiren’s amazing treatise, “The Opening of the Eyes.”

I was teaching 150-170 high school students in math and physics so my paper made slow progress, but after a year, I started expanding the context. The more I worked on the piece, the more I looked at Nichiren’s overall life. Finally it occurred to me that I had never seen a complete biography of him. That is when I decided to write this book.

Now that it is done and in print, I am pleasantly surprised by how much I like it. Whether Buddhist or non-Buddhist, readers of this book will learn a lot and enjoy the read.

To find the book, go to Amazon and type: Ultican

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The South’s Long War on Black Literacy

14 Apr

By Thomas Ultican 4/14/2025

Derek Black’s masterpiece of research, Dangerous Learning, reveals the centuries of struggle for Black Americans to become educated. When I arrived at the Network for Public Education conference April 4, I ran into Professor Black (University of South Carolina Law School) and mentioned to him I almost finished reading his book on the airplane. He absurdly wanted to know how boring I found it. The truth is that this beautifully written book is extremely engaging.

Denmark Vesey

Growing up in Idaho, my knowledge of American slavery is quite lacking. I had never heard of Denmark Vesey, who played a major role in the suppression of education for slaves.

Joseph Vesey was a slave trader who brought 390 enslaved people including Demark to St. Thomas and Saint-Domingue (now known as Haiti) in 1781. Joseph’s slave ship brings the first record of the approximately 14-year-old Denmark. He was sold in Haiti along with the other 390 people but it seems he feigned epilepsy and Joseph was forced to take him back. Soon after, Denmark became Captain Vesey’s trusted assistant.

Black tells this story in about 20 pages in the book. I will cut it down a little.

Denmark learned to read and in 1799 he won the lottery ($1500). He paid Joseph $600 for his freedom and through various means; Denmark became highly educated. He was also inspired by the slave revolution in Haiti. Denmark became an authority on the Bible being known in the community as “a man of the book”. (Page 16) He taught classes at the African Church which became the famous African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church also known as the AME Church. Denmark was obsessed with learning and read widely including classical literature.

In the Old Testament, Vesey found the story of the Israelites’ path from slavery. He taught his friends how the children of Israel were delivered from bondage in Egypt. Professor Black explains:

“In it [the Old Testament], Vesey found a God who stood on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressor, and who intervened in the world not to reinforce slavery but to free the Israelites from it. God consistently assured the Israelites that He would deliver their enemies into their hands if they would follow His will. And following His will did not mean turning the other cheek, fleeing from conflict, or suffering in silence. It often meant smiting those who stood against them, including women and children.”   (Page 20)

In 1822, Vesey having been deeply and fundamentally changed by his literacy planned a slave rebellion. He chose July 14th for the liberation of Black people in Charleston.  The plan was workable but an enslaved man came forward on May 30th claiming he had been recruited to participate in a slave revolt. After that, Vesey’s plans fell apart and he along with his co-conspirators were put to death. Black noted, “When Frederick Douglass implored crowds of Black men to join the Union Army in 1863, he offered a simple message: ‘Remember Denmark Vesey of Charleston.’” (Page 35)

Unfortunately, it was remembering Denmark Vesey that pushed southerners into an all out suppression of Black literacy that lasted well into the twentieth century.

Suppressing Education

The last open debate on slavery in the South was conducted by the Virginia legislature in 1832. William M. Rivas, a lawyer and member of a wealthy colonial family claimed that elite planters had “held the state’s democratic process in a death grip for decades.” (Page 107) He said they had intentionally limited education not just for slaves but for poor and middle-class White people as well.

While the North was engaged in developing a state supported public education system, the South, under the influence of wealthy elites, absolutely opposed state funding for education.

It was a shock for me to discover that Thomas Jefferson was a white supremacist. In Notes on the State of Virginia he wrote that Black people were “inferior to whites in the endowments of both of body and mind.” (Page 65) He said that this reality posed a powerful obstacle to emancipation.

After the 1832 debate, censorship and anti-literacy in the South took on a life of their own. The South became more and more isolated and intolerant.

For the slaves, seeking literacy was hidden and secretive. Finding the time to study was difficult and a flickering candle could draw attention and suspicion. It is reported that enslaved people would study in caves or in holes they created in the woods.

“In Mississippi, people told of holes large enough to accommodate a group. They called them ‘pit schools.’” (Page 188)

After the Civil War, former slaves were able to openly attend school and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 attempted to force states to pay for it. The Act created three requirements for states to be readmitted to the Union: extend the vote to black men, ratify the 14th Amendment and guarantee a republican form of government. Black noted, “A republican form of government meant, among other things, ensuring public education.” (Page 244)

However the citizens of the south were not going to accept Black people having equal rights. Terrorist groups attacked schools and teachers. The more Union troops were drawn down, the greater the violence became.

1874 Harper’s Political Cartoon by Thomas Nast

During Reconstruction, 631 attacks on black schools have been documented. White citizens of Tennessee under the leadership of the KKK destroyed 76 Black schools. (Page 261)

In order to secure victory in the 1877 Presidential race, Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to a compromise between southern Democrats and pro-business Republicans to end Reconstruction. Soon after, southern states started rewriting the required constitutions they needed to rejoin the Union. There was a two pronged agenda: “disenfranchise Black voters, and segregate and underfund Black education.” (Page 168) Jim Crow laws became enshrined in the new southern state constitutions.

In 1896, the Plessy v. Ferguson case held up the bogus concept of separate but equal facilities. That same year saw a new Louisiana law that took Black male voter registration from 95.6% of the population to 1.1% by 1904. In 1902, Nicolas Bauer, a man that would become superintendent of public schools in New Orleans, wrote:

“I realize from my limited observation that to teach the negro (sic) is a different problem. His natural ability is of a low character and it is possible to bring him to a certain level beyond which it is impossible to carry him. That point is reached in the fifth grade of our schools.”

The lack of justice and abundance of ignorance is what the Supreme Court tried to rectify with Brown v. Board of Education.

The fact is these two centuries of hostility toward educating all American citizens is still causing harm. Derek Black’s Dangerous Learning is a must read for anyone that cares about justice.

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Movement to Destroy American Democracy

12 Mar

By Thomas Ultican 3/12/2025

Author Katherine Stewart is a friend of mine. OK, we are not bosom buddies and have only met face to face once briefly. However, in 2017, I wrote about her book The Good News Club and we began communicating by email. In 2019, when she published The Power Worshippers, I again reviewed her book and our email communications were enhanced. Now, she has completed the trilogy with Money Lies and God, her just released book, which continues a deep dive into Christian nationalism and the extreme right’s anti-democratic agenda.

On Money Lies and God’s cover, Congressman Jamie Raskin insightfully labels the book, “An indispensable citizen’s guide to the antidemocratic MAGA right.”

Whenever I read a book, the first thing I do is read everything on the cover and all introductory material. I was amazed by the well known people commenting on this book. Besides Jamie Raskin, I was particularly stuck by comments from Nancy MacLean and Steve Schmidt. Not that their selected comments were so mind blowing but because they are such heroes of mine.

Maclean, the famous historian and author of “Democracy in Chains”, states, “A bracing must-read story of how the varied streams have merged into a mighty river moving toward massive destruction—and it explains how together, we can divert it.”

Schmidt, John McCain’s campaign manager, political strategist and cofounder of the Lincoln Project, wrote, “Pieces through the fog and noise to reveal the dangerous forces gathering, planning, and plotting against liberty.”

The comments made me think this book could be special. I was not disappointed.

Building toward a Trilogy

Living in Santa Barbra, California in the early 2000s, Stewart was stunned to learn that her daughter’s elementary school had a protestant after school program for students called “The Good News Club.” For the past almost two decades this discovery has driven her to research how religious organizations are now allowed to proselytize babies in public facilities. The more she dug, the scarier reality became.

A significant figure in the tearing down of the separation of church and state was lawyer Jay Sekulow. Born into a Jewish family he converted to evangelical Christianity in the 1980s. In 1990, Pat Robertson brought Sekulow together with a few other lawyers to form the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) (notice how close the acronym is to ACLU). In 1994, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) added its name to the growing roster of well financed Christian legal organizations and is backed by groups that are a veritable who’s who of the Christian Right.

In 2001, this legal juggernaut succeeded again in their efforts to undermine the separation of church and state with its victory in Good News Club v. Milford Central School. Stewart commented:

“An alien visitor to planet First Amendment could be forgiven for summarizing the entire story thus: Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, together with a few fellow travelers on the Supreme Court and their friends in the ADF and ACLJ, got together and ordered that the United States should establish a nationwide network of evangelical churches housed in taxpayer-financed school facilities.”  

The destruction of the first amendment was well underway.

In “The Power Worshippers”, Stewart dove deeply into the world of Christian nationalism. Among the many insightful items she shared were the actions of Paul Weyrich. He coined the term “moral majority.” He also co-founded the Heritage Foundation, The Free Congress Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Weyrich made 12 trips to Russia and Eastern Europe before his death in 2008 and became a strong supporter of closer relations with Russia. Stewart reports, “He was writing and speaking frequently in defense of Russia and facilitating visits between U.S. conservatives and Russian political leaders.” (Power Page 270)

In 2013, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association called Putin a “lion of Christianity.” In 2014, Franklin Graham defended Putin for his efforts “to protect his nations’ children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.” He also lamented that Americans have “abdicated our moral leadership.” In 2015, Graham met privately with Putin for 45-minutes. In 2016, Mike Pence said Putin was “a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country.” (Power Page 272)

Donald J. Trumpski’s embrace of Putin and other despotic world leaders is an outcome spurred by Christian nationalism.

Completing the Trilogy

In the introduction to “Money Lies and God”, Stewart states, “There is no world in which America will become the ‘Christian nation’ that it never actually was; there is only a world in which a theocratic oligarchy imposes a corrupt and despotic order in the name of sectarian values.”  (Money Page 7)

In these pages, Stewart expands beyond just the evangelical community to include the Conservative Catholic community that has joined forces with the evangelicals. The reader is introduced to Opus Dei, the ultraconservative and secretive Catholic group founded in fascist Spain. “Opus Dei does not disclose its membership, but Leonard Leo has a listed entry on the website of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., which is operated by Opus Dei …” (Money Page 43)

 Stewart reports on the big 2023 Mom’s for Liberty event in Philadelphia. That same year, she attended the Network for Public Education event in Washington D.C. which is where I had my face to face encounter with my “friend.” She writes extensively about both events.

The book does a lot of documenting of the tremendous amount of money right wingers are pouring into their agenda. She cites the spending by the DeVos-Prince family, Texan Tim Dunn, Jeff Yass, Richard Uihlein, the Corkerys, Mike Rydin, Rebekah Mercer, Charles Koch and more. You meet the Ziklag group, a secretive organizations for high net-worth Christian nationalists. A ProPublica article asserts, “Ziklag appears to be the first coordinated effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overtly Christian nationalist agenda …”

I was surprised that our American psychosis is being spread rapidly around the world. Stewart attended the 2023 National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) in London where she saw representatives of the ADF and the Heritage foundation.

Stewart summarizes the NatCon pitch:

“The sum of all our problems—and the greatest threat that the United States and its sister republics around the world have ever faced—is the rise of the ‘woke’ elite. Cosmopolitan, overeducated, gender-fluid, parasitic, anti-Christian idolaters who worship at the shrine of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the leaders of this progressive cabal are bent on elevating undeserving people of color while crushing hardworking ‘real’ Americans (or real Britons, or whoever is in the audience).” (Money Page 100)

In the “The Rise of the Spirit Warriors” chapter, Stewart notes,

“In October 2023, the spirit warriors notched another stunning victory when one of their own … became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana indicated on his first day as Speaker that God himself had a hand in his ascension to a position second in line to the presidency.” (Money Page 163)

Late in the book, Stewart contends, “The axis around which a sector of the global antidemocratic reaction now turns is an extraordinary alliance between a dominant wing of the Republican Party in the U.S. and the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.” (Money Page 214)

I hope you read “Money Lies and God”.  It is an extraordinarily well written and researched endeavor.  

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