Oakland Public Education Fund Questioned

23 Aug

By Thomas Ultican 8/23/2025

Recently the Oakland Public Education Fund (OPEF) posted, “OUSD Board of Education Renews Long-standing Partnership with The Ed Fund.” OUSD is the Oakland Unified School District and “The Ed Fund” is the latest of many names used to identify OPEF. A quick look at OPEF’s tax forms (TIN: 43-2014630) reveals that they have assets of about $25 million and a yearly income of more than $15 million. The question becomes who is this wealthy group and do their purposes include something more than just good education?

OPEF, formed in 2003 and was originally called “Oakland Autonomous Small Schools Foundation Inc.” EdWeek reported that in 2000 and 2003 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided two grants totaling more than $25 million some of which was designated for small school incubators. It seems likely some of this money was used as seed money to establish OPEF.

The founding executive director of OPEF was Jonathan Klein, a 1997 Yale graduate who became a Teach for America (TFA) fifth grade teacher in the Compton Unified School District. After coming to Oakland in addition to founding OPEF, he went on to become CEO of GO Public Schools, became Bay Area executive director of TFA and chief program officer at the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation. In 2013, he was named Change Agent of the year by New Schools Venture Fund. In other words, he is an education profiteer closely associated with enemies of public schools.

According to the OPEF web-page, the organization relaunched as the Oakland Schools Foundation in 2012 and then relaunched again in 2014 as the Oakland Public Education Fund. Today they refer to themselves as the “The Ed Fund.” In 2016, they put in motion a corporate partnership with Salesforce which provided $2.5 million for middle school computer science and math. This raises concerns that “The Ed Fund” is inappropriately employing wealth to drive public school curriculum using other than democratic means.

Billionaires Finance OPEF

A change in the way data was reported appeared in the OPEF tax forms for 2024. Previously, their reporting on the contributor’s page simply stated “RESTRICTED.” The new report still hides the contributor’s names but provides the amounts given by seven individuals.

In addition to the contributors not listed above, the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation have granted OPEF a total of $785,833 (IN: 65-1202020), the East Bay Community Foundation contributed $557,760 (IN: 94-6070996) and the Silicon Valley Community Fund provided a whopping $8,349,085 (IN: 20-5205488). The Silicon Valley Community Fund is a dark money site where extremely wealthy people can provide money without their name being attached. It is worth noting that the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation has granted the East Bay Community Foundation $6,165,000 since its founding in 2003.

Since 2014, OPEF has averaged giving more than $5 million a year to the Oakland Unified School District for a total of $51,885,477. However, their other spending undermines public education and promotes privatization. Educate78 has received significant support from both the Hastings Fund and the City Fund, known enemies of the public school system. GO Public Schools has been a consistent advocate for expanding the charter school movement. TFA has foisted unqualified teachers with 5 weeks of training on classrooms throughout America. The New Teachers Center is a Bill Gates developed center in Santa Cruz.

Anyone working in a public school knows that charter schools directly compete with and undermine public schools.

Many of the foundations that OPEF is supporting are supporters of school privatization or they just make us ask why. For example, why has OPEF sent The San Francisco Foundation over $2.5 million? Why are they sending money to obviously anti-public schools groups like the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation or the David and Lucille Packard Foundation?

What is the true purpose of the Oakland Public Education Fund? Do the billionaires who are financing it want to control OUSD and promote privatization or is this true philanthropy. It is hard to know but rich people giving away money based on the goodness of the hearts seems like a rare event. 

The T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation

T. (Thomas) Gary Rogers was the first non-family member to become chairman of the board at Levi Strauss. Before Levi Strauss, he and business partner Rich Cronk purchased Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream. T. Gary was the CEO while he and Cronk were the principal shareholder for almost 30 years. They sold to Nestlé in 2002. T. Gary became chairman of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and was once Chairman of Safeway Inc. This boy from Stockton became a highly regarded and respected businessman.

T. Gary and his wife founded the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation in 2003. Looking through their tax filings, it seems there are two distinct periods. Period one is from the foundations start to the death of T. Gary Rogers on May 2, 2017.

In 2003, the Rogers family put $35 million in to start the foundation and the next year they put in another $13.25 million which put the total assets at $52 million. That included some return on investment.

The only giving cited, which started in 2006, was to an organization that became the East Bay Community Foundation. In 2010, they made their first two education related grants to Lighthouse Charter Schools for a total of $840,000. In 2011, in addition to giving to Lighthouse they started granting $50,000 a year to the Oakland Schools Foundation which was later renamed OPEF. By 2017, the Rogers Family Foundation had grown to $78 million in assets.  

Period two began after T. Gary died.

From the start, T. Gary’s son Brian has been significantly involved in leading the Foundation. In 2019, he dramatically increased the number of grants given and the money spent. He upped spending to support pro-science of reading organizations and individual charter organizations. He put money into organizations working to privatized public education and advance the charter industry.

The foundations 2022 Tax Form showed the total assets dropping to $55,367,184. However, this seems to be part of a plan. In 2020, Brian posted to the foundations web page:

“It is therefore with bittersweet emotions that we share with our grantees, partners, and fellow community organizations our planned spend down of the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Family Foundation. Within the next five years, we anticipate sunsetting our Oakland education grantmaking and operations.”

That $55 million left in 2022 still has the potential to reek a lot of havoc.

Conclusion

OPEF is a billionaire funded-organization that is exerting undo control on Oakland public schools. Some of their spending is laudable like their generous giving to OUSD. However, so much money in the control of a few not well-known individuals undermines the democratic process. I cannot help wondering if some of the odd decisions previous superintendent, Kyla Johnson-Trammell, made were coerced by the money this organization wielded.    

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Behaviorism as Cognitive Science

10 Aug

By Thomas Ultican 8/10/2025

Greg Toppo writes for ‘The 74’ which suggests he is a professional propagandist working for billionaires. In his July 24th article, “‘Cognitive Science,’ All the Rage in British Schools, Fails to Register in U.S”, he did not even attempt to be objective as he lionized a form of ‘Cognitive Science’ that is a euphemism for behaviorism. It is a corrupt approach that philosophically undermines a field of research exploring undeniably important ideas.

There are many definitions of cognitive science; this one is from Yale University:

“Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field devoted to exploring the nature of cognitive processes such as perception, reasoning, memory, attention, language, imagery, motor control, and problem-solving. The goal of cognitive science is to understand (1) the representations and processes in our minds that underwrite these capacities, (2) how they are acquired, and how they develop, and (3) how they are implemented in underlying hardware (biological or otherwise). Stated more simply, the goal of cognitive science is to understand how the mind works!”

A cognitive science subset, Cognitive load theory, was developed in mid-1980s by Australian education psychologist John Sweller. His theory pays attention to human cognitive architecture: characteristics and relations between long-term memory and short term memory, and how load on memory affects learning.

The basic premise of cognitive load theory is that short term memory or working memory is limited and can be overloaded. Therefore, Sweller postulates that explicit instruction is superior to discovery approaches for teaching new content and skills. He claims that to think critically we need to know a lot of stuff; therefore critical thinking can only be actualized through copious amounts of content knowledge. He and colleagues say it is not possible to teach critical thinking because it is not a transferable skill.

Selling Cognitive Load Theory

Toppo began his article by introducing his readers to Zack Groshell, a former Seattle-area fourth-grade teacher. His 2024 book, Just Tell Them, is a guide for delivering explicit instruction and adhering to the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) premise of learning. Dewey, Vygotsky and Piaget would surely be saddened by this 21st century misunderstanding of student development.

The article also introduces Benjamin Riley, founder of Deans for Impact, a Texas-based group that has pushed to make cognitive science more central to U.S. teacher training programs. I find it instructive that his organization is financially supported by Besos, Gates, Dell, Schusterman, Zuckerberg and other billionaires.

Toppo cites the influence of E. D. Hirsch who wrote in his book, The Schools We Need, “Higher-level skills critically depend upon the automatic mastery of repeated lower-level activities.” He further called for tougher standards which prompted education writer, Alfie Kohn to note that Hirsch’s approach “reflects a particular model of learning—behaviorism.”

As Kohn stated, in the debate between behaviorism and “constuctivism”, Hirch comes down squarely on the side of behaviorism. Kohn went on to observe that, “E. D. Hirsch’s Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, might be called the ‘bunch o’ facts’ approach to education.” (Page 11)

Like other behaviorists, E. D. Hirsch is calling for education material to be atomized and drilled.

Most of Toppo’s article is concentrated on education in the United Kingdom which might explain why he brought up the very unpopular education leader under former Prime Minister David Cameron, Michael Gove. Gove attempted to reform English education through privatization and testing. Gove’s associate Nick Gibbs said he first encountered Hirsch’s book in 2006 and that it formed the basis for all of their education reforms.

In 2013, more than 150 leading educator wrote and signed a piece for the Times of London calling Gove’s reforms dangerous. They stated in part:

“Sir, We, the undersigned academics and children’s authors, are gravely concerned at the impact that current developments in state education in England are likely to have on our children and their futures.”

“These damaging developments must stop. If they go ahead there will be devastating consequences for children’s mental health, for future opportunities and, most importantly, for the quality of childhood itself.”

At about the same time, England’s national teachers union held a unanimous vote of no confidence in Gove. General Secretary of the teachers union, Christine Blower, said teachers were not the “enemies of promise” that Gove said they were. “We just have the temerity to assert that the secretary of state is wrong.”

Meaningless Data Quoted

Besides citing people like Gove and Hirsch to sell this new behaviorist approach to education, Toppo writes, “From 2011 to 2021, English students’ average scores in the PIRLS International Benchmarks of Reading Achievement, a key global comparison, rose six points, placing them fourth worldwide, while U.S. students’ dropped eight points, ranking the U.S. just below England.”

This was weak sauce.

Top 8 scoring Nations in the 2021 PIRLS

For several years, education in England has been trying to get rid of the Gove stench, and they appear to be on track. The six point gain in a decade on a more than 500 point scale is not much to brag about. In 2011, the US score was 556 England’s was 552 in 2021 the US score was 548 England’s was 556. Even if I believed in standardized testing, which I don’t, I still do not see any real difference. Remember, we were just starting to come out of the COVID nightmare in 2021.

In 2022, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), did its every three year assessment of 15 year olds one year late because of COVID. Of the 80 countries compared, the USA’s reading score of 504 was number 9 and the UK’s score of 494 was number 13. There is not a lot to brag about here either.

The testing data Toppo cites does not prove or even suggest that this new behaviorism is any kind of silver bullet.

Researchers and Educators Have Concerns

The lead sentence in the latest issue of UK’s Schools Week states, “Teachers need to be sceptical about applying popular but “untested” cognitive science theories to education, a panel of experts has warned.”

Noam Chomsky is the scientist-philosopher who more than any other contributor seriously undermined B.F. Skinner’s theories of behaviorism. A 2006 interview with Chomsky states, “Chomsky’s (1959) review of Verbal Behavior (Skinner, 1957) has been hailed as the most influential document in the history of psychology.”

Importantly, behaviorism undermines the important works of William James and John Dewey. Chomsky’s 1959 review of Skinner’s book went a long way toward reviving Dewey’s theories and shutting down behaviorist ideology.

In 2022, Australian researcher Peter Ellerton published, “On critical thinking and content knowledge: a critique of the assumptions of cognitive load theory [CLT].”  After presenting evidence from several papers, Ellerton asserts:

“The absolute claim of CLT that “critical thinking is unteachable” is clearly refuted by these studies. As is the claim that it is not transferable. The softer claim that it is best done through a context of engagement with deep content knowledge is also challenged by these findings. Claiming critical thinking is not directly susceptible to pedagogical influence beyond content development stands in contrast to a significant body of research and pedagogical practice that does not seem to be engaged with or addressed by CLT.“

Why is CLT Promoted?

The application of CLT makes teaching children at digital screens more doable. Delivering on-line education is much easier if it is broken down into small chunks so the learner can work through menus of skills and assessments. It is bad education but the billionaires promoting it care more about profits than America. Besides, their children will attend pricey private schools that don’t employ behaviorism.

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Christian Nationalism and Education

28 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/28/2025

Since 2024, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas have passed laws requiring ten commandment posters in all classrooms. These kinds of laws come to us courtesy of a single Christian “bill mill,” Project Blitz. Dozens of other state bills in fidelity with Project Blitz’s proposed legislation were also passed. In 2021, they distributed 74 pieces of model legislation of which 14 passed into law including “Parental Review and Consent for Sex Education” and “Religious Freedom Day” promoting “a historical version of ‘religious freedom’ rooted in Christian nationalism.” Mark Keierleber, reporting for The 74, wrote, “Among the architects of Project Blitz is the Barton-founded influence machine, WallBuilders.”

The WallBuilders home page claims to be, “Helping Americans Remember and Preserve the True History of Our Great Nation …” Unfortunately; it is in reality a propaganda site posting lies about American history in order to advance a Christian Nationalist agenda. Texas preacher and amateur historian, David Barton, founded WallBuilders and has become the most quoted man in the realm of Christian Nationalism. The organization’s name is an Old Testament reference to rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, told an audience at the ProFamily Legislators Conference, which was being hosted by WallBuilders, Barton’s teachings have had “a profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do.” It is widely held that the Speaker is a Christian Nationalist. President Trump has cultivated their support. In March, he hosted David Barton in the oval office.

David Barton and Trump in the Oval Office this March

David Barton

Barton was born in Fort Worth, Texas. When he completed junior high, his family moved to the small Texas town of Aledo about 40 miles west of Fort Worth. After graduating third in his high school class, he attended Oral Roberts University, the evangelical Christian college in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Barton came to Oral Roberts on a math and science scholarship but ended up with a degree in religious education.

His parents started a Bible study group in Aledo which became a fundamentalist church and a K-12 school. David taught math and science, coached basketball, and became the school’s principal.

Barton became an amateur historian. In her first book, The Good News Club, Katherine Stewart claimed, “Pseudo-historian David Barton—a Texas-based darling of the Religious Right and founder of the Christian Nationalist organizations WallBuilders and the Black Robe Regiment—seems to have no problem fictionalizing the history.” (Page 67)

Nate Blakeslee in an article for the Texas Monthly observed:

“In a broader sense, Barton’s work is reminiscent of nineteenth-century historians like Charles Coffin and Parson Weems, scholars who wrote from an unabashedly Christian perspective at a time when there was no culture of objectivity among historians. Weems was best known for his biography of George Washington, in which he did his best to claim Washington for the Christians, despite his well-known reputation as a Deist. In a brief, credulous treatise called The Bulletproof George Washington, Barton resurrected an old Weems-era tale about the supposed divine protection of Washington during the French and Indian War.”

In her second book, The Power Worshippers, Stewart noted:

“The historical errors and obfuscations tumbled out of Barton’s works fast and furious. Intent on demonstrating that the American republic was founded on ‘Judeo-Christian principles,’ Barton reproduced and alleged quote from James Madison to the effect that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of American civilization. Chuck Norris, Rush Limbaugh, Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson, and countless other luminaries of the right recycled the quote in so many iterations that it has become a fixture of Christian nationalist ideology. Yet there is no evidence that Madison ever said such a thing.” (Page 133)

An NPR article from 2012 provides a good example of what Blakeslee and Stewart are writing about. While most of us learned that the Constitution was a secular document, Barton disagrees and says it is laced with biblical quotations:

‘“You look at Article 3, Section 1, the treason clause,’ he told James Robison on Trinity Broadcast Network. ‘Direct quote out of the Bible. You look at Article 2, the quote on the president has to be a native born? That is Deuteronomy 17:15, verbatim. I mean, it drives the secularists nuts because the Bible’s all over it! Now we as Christians don’t tend to recognize that. We think it’s a secular document; we’ve bought into their lies. It’s not.”

“We looked up every citation Barton said was from the Bible, but not one of them checked out. Moreover, the Constitution as written in 1787 has no mention of God or religion except to prohibit a religious test for office.”

In 2012, Barton’s bestselling book “The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson” was pulled by its Christian publisher, Thomas Nelson, because they “lost confidence” in the book. Senior Vice President Brian Hampton noted, “There were historical details — matters of fact, not matters of opinion, that were not supported at all.”

The 1792 Aitken Bible was the first Bible ever printed in the USA. Barton claims it was published and paid for by congress. This was another one of his proofs that the United States was founded on Christian principles. The bible was not published by congress; it was published and paid for by printer Robert Aitken. At the time, there was an embargo on bibles from England. Responding to Aitken’s request, Congress agreed to have its chaplains check the Bible for accuracy.

From 1997 to 2006, Barton was vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party.

In 2015, David Barton took leadership of Ted Cruz’s Keep the Promise Pack. The $38 million super PAC which put Cruz legitimately into the presidential contest was financed mostly by four people: New York hedge fund guy Robert Mercer ($11 million), Houston investor Toby Neugebauer ($10 million) and ($15 million) from Dan and Farris Wilks, billionaire brothers from West Texas. This was the Christian Nationalist ticket for 2016.

Barton Speaking at a 2016 Cruz Rally in Henderson, Nevada

The Henderson rally was hosted by Keep the Promise PAC which Barton was running. Besides Cruz, he was also joined on stage by Christian Nationalist pundit Glenn Beck. Barton maintains a relative low profile but his influence is massive.

Wrapping Up

Most people have never heard of David Barton but his sway with politicians like Speaker Mike Johnson, born again evangelical pastors and Christian Nationalist billionaires is pervasive. Several political organizations have started tracking his activities. The following were extracted from a lengthy article on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s web page:

“In 2012, readers of the History News Network voted Barton’s new book the “least credible history book in print.”

“Without religion, and specifically without Christianity, as Barton narrowly understands it, the Constitution will die.”

“…, Barton is better seen as a Republican political operative, as researcher Frederick Clarkson has described him, and as a culture warrior, who is deeply committed to right-wing theology, and seems focused not on accurate historical writing but instead on rewriting the norms of government and culture in a decidedly Christian supremacist direction.”

“He has advised Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Sam Brownback, and Michael Huckabee.”

“This includes bills to ban abortion and prevent gay marriage, support religious expression in public schools and public life, and resist gun control.”

“And it allows him to argue that anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and actions are constitutionally, as well as religiously, imperative.”

“In 2010, the Texas Board of Education voted to rewrite the history textbooks to make them more conservative and Christian-friendly. Barton was appointed as an expert advisor. This caused controversy as Barton supported efforts to excise Martin Luther King Jr. and 1960s farm worker activist Cesar Chavez from textbooks.”

The ideology is so backward that only lies and billionaire dollars sustain it.

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Trump: Project 2025 and Education

19 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/19/2025

Lindsey M. Burke, Director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, opened her education section in Project 2025 stating, “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” The liar-in-chief made it seem while campaigning that he knew little about Project 2025 and declared it was not his agenda. Don’t be shocked to learn that his education policies appear to be lifted directly from “The Mandate for Leadership the Conservative Promise – Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project.”

On July 14th, the Supreme Court sanctioned the Presidents dismantlement of the Department of Education. Many of us thought that the administration could not shut it down because it would never survive a filibuster in the Senate. As Diane Ravitch wrote:

“But I was wrong. Obviously. It didn’t occur to me that Trump would fire half the staff of the Department and dismantle it without seeking Congressional approval.”

In 1974, congress passed the Impoundment Control Act which Richard Nixon signed into law. It compels an administration to spend the money congress has appropriated. Most people, like Diane Ravitch, never expected Trump to just ignore the law.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, dissented with the ruling which overturned lower courts and allowed the administration to fire almost half of the Department of Education work force. Before the layoffs, the Department had 4100 employees, with buyouts and these layoffs; the department now employs fewer than 2,200 people. Sotomayor wrote, “When the executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”

The Current Supreme Court of the United States

It took only ten minutes after the Supreme Court’s decision was announced for Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, to let more than a thousand people know they were officially fired.

On his failed Truth Social platform, even though he knows nothing about education, Trump posted:

“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE. Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!”

Attacks and Legal Responses

Two more examples of Professor Burke’s numerous proposals (page 322) in Project 2025 are part of the Trump-2 agenda:  

“Restoring state and local control over education funding. As Washington begins to downsize its intervention in education, existing funding should be sent to states as grants over which they have full control, enabling states to put federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law.

Safeguarding civil rights. Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.

After the Supreme Court authorized Trump to ignore the law and continue gutting the Education Department, he posted:

“Beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good. We want to return our students to the states.”

In his March 20 executive order to close the Department of Education, Trump demonstrated a weak understanding of education, “This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.” It is well known that NAEP’s proficiency level is set well above grade level which means 70% of students not being rated proficient is not a bad score. Writing in Forbes, Peter Greene shared, “An NCES report back in 2007 showed that while NAEP considers “basic” students not college ready, 50% of those basic students had gone on to earn a degree.”

This termination of employees order survived legal push-back but it is not certain that the Supreme Court is completely corrupt and some of the many legal fights pending may not have such a MAGA pleasing outcome.

 After his win, Trump said, “We had a big win with the Supreme Court over the Department of Education, and we went, as you know, we want to bring education back to the states, take the federal government out of it, little, tiny bit of supervision, but very little, almost nothing, like to make sure they speak English.”

If that is true, why would his Big Billionaire Budget eliminate Title III-A money which is used to assist English language learners. Or end the 1966 Migrant Education Program designed to supports students of families who move for seasonal labor.

Court Battles

In February, Secretary McMahon sent the infamous “Dear Colleague Letter” which attacked diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) programs as being founded on racial discrimination. One response from a school leader refusing to certify that he and his district would end their DEI program noted, “Thank you for your April 3 memorandum, which I read several times — not because it was legally persuasive, but because I kept checking to see if it was satire.”

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon

On April 24th, the Legal Defense Fund Reported concerning McMahon’s order, “Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of a certification requirement from the U.S. Department of Education that threatens schools with a loss of federal funding based on harmful misinterpretations of civil rights laws, threatening Black students’ equal access to a quality education.”

The Wonkette reported about another attack on head start, “Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added further shame to his family’s legacy Thursday, announcing that effective immediately, undocumented immigrant children will be banned from the Head Start preschool program, which not only provides child care and preparation for kindergarten to low-income preschoolers, but also provides school meals and health screenings.” (Thursday was July 10th)

The ACLU filed a suit April 28th to stop the Trump administrations attacks on head start stating, “Defendants are now dismantling this crucial program in defiance of Congress—a goal specifically identified in “Project 2025: A Mandate for Leadership.” They say they will amend the suit to include Kennedy’s attack. The ACLU lawyers claim this is part of a broader attack on working families in which the Trump administration is attempting to rewrite the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) to make it harder for children to access critical early childhood education. ACLU attorney Jennesa Calvo-Friedman noted, “No agency – including HHS – has ever defined early education as a restricted ‘federal public benefit.’”

As more and more court battles pile up, Reuters’ Andrew Goudsward reports, “Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit.”  A lawyer who left stated:

“Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system. How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?”

Lawyers cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable for the wave of departures. A few feared they would be pressured into misrepresenting facts or legal issues in court.

In another legal battle, Professor Johann Neem of Western Washington University believes the June 27 Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor threatens public education. The winning parents were opposed to LGBTQ literature of any kind and sued for the right to review all material before their kids see it.

Justice Sotomayor wrote, “Never, in the context of public schools or elsewhere, has this Court held that mere exposure to concepts inconsistent with one’s religious beliefs could give rise to a First Amendment claim.” She concluded, “To presume public schools must be free of all such exposure is to presume public schools out of existence.”

The Trump/Project 2025 attack on public education has become a giant legal battle. Will public schools survive or will our convicted felon president and the radical-right prevail?

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Education Policy Harmed Sacramento

11 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/11/2025

California’s most venerable high school was destroyed by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the charter school industry. Established before the Civil War in 1856, Sacramento High School was the second-oldest high school west of the Mississippi. Driven by testing lunacy and NCLB mandates, Sacramento Unified’s board contentiously voted 4 – 3 to close the school. This came about in 2003 during the Bill Gates small schools are better era. He sent $3 million for the proposed St. Hope charter school to break Sacramento High into six smaller schools.

Kevin Johnson attended Sacramento High before staring in basketball for the University of California Berkeley. He was a gifted athlete which led to an amazing career in the National Basketball Association (NBA). His 1988–89 season was the first of three straight seasons in which he averaged at least 20 points and 10 assists, joining Oscar Robertson and Isiah Thomas as the only players in league history to accomplish that feat. His play in a 1994 playoff game provides insight into how good he was. He drove baseline and dunked over Rockets’ center Hakeem Olajuwon. It was part of a second consecutive 38-point, 12-assist effort.

While in the NBA, Johnson remained active in his home town. The Clinton Whitehouse noted:

“St. HOPE Academy, founded in 1989 by NBA All-Star Kevin Johnson, is a youth development organization in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacrament. St. HOPE Academy was designed to supplement Sacramento’s public education system and offer a structured, positive environment for educational opportunities, leadership training, character development, spiritual growth and physical well-being.”  

Oak Park was Sacramento’s first suburb in the late 19th century. It was originally populated by White Americans. By the 1930s, Oak Park was victimized by redlining which pushed Black Americans into East Oak Park. In the 1960s, freeways completed the job of turning Oak Park into a Black zone of poverty which also led to increased crime and gangs. With Bush and Kennedy’s NCLB, the storied Sacramento High School in poverty stricken Oak Park was doomed for testing destruction.

The one variable that standardized testing correlates with is poverty. Standardized testing was never capable of evaluating schools or educators.

Good Intentions; Terrible Thinking

In January 2003, the Sacramento school board voted to close Sacramento High School. This came about after the state targeted the 1,800-student school for sanctions and possible takeover. Sacramento High had failed to raise student test achievement for two consecutive years. In that benighted era, great schools were destroyed because they served poor families.

In 2003, it appears that even before Sacramento High was closed powerful community leaders had decided to have St. Hope operate the school. In January, the board voted to close the high school and on March 3rd, they gave approval to St. Hope’s plan. The teachers union presented a reorganization plan of their own but it did not generate any meaningful support.

St. Hope not only had backing from Bill Gates, they brought in Stanford’s Linda Darling-Hammond to consult on their new school design. Margaret Fortune, who would later found a charter school company and serve as chairman of the California Charter Schools Association, came in as project manager. At the time, Fortune stated:

“Because of the attention we have been able to bring to the school from both educators and fund-raisers, we really have a good chance to turn the school around…. We have a real opportunity to make this one of the finest urban high schools in America.”

Kevin Johnson was elected mayor of Sacramento in 2008 in a landslide. However, before the election a scandal arose:

“The first major crack in St. HOPE’s gleaming facade, and a pivotal moment in the “Chartergate” narrative, emerged with the investigation into the misuse of AmeriCorps grant funds. In August 2008, Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General (IG) for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), initiated a referral for criminal and civil prosecution of Kevin Johnson to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”  

Much to Walpin’s dismay, the justice department settlement stipulated that St. HOPE and Johnson were responsible for repaying approximately half of the $848,000 in AmeriCorps funding they had received. Johnson agreed to personally pay $73,836, the then-Executive Director Dana Gonzalez paid $1,000, and St. HOPE committed to repaying the remaining $350,000 over a decade. Crucially, the settlement did not compel any party to admit to misusing the funds.

At this time, Johnson’s new fiancée, Michelle Rhee did damage control. The LA Times reported:

“Michelle Rhee, the nationally known education reformer who is now head of the Washington, D.C., public schools, had several conversations with a federal inspector general in which she made the case for Johnson and the school he ran in Sacramento, according to the inspector general. Rhee, who had served on the board of the school and is now engaged to marry Johnson, said he was ‘a good guy.”’

There were also a couple allegations of sexual misconduct by Johnson over more than a decade, however, nothing ever came of them. Johnson married Rhee in 2011 and they have two daughters.

Kevin Johnson and Michelle Rhee

In 2003, St. Hope opened two charter schools. One was the replacement for Sacramento High School called Sacramento Charter High School and the other was a K-8 elementary school called St. Hope Ps7.

The schools have been struggling. The Sacramento Bee reported:

“At both PS7 and Sacramento Charter High, the rates of teachers with appropriate credentials started low and plummeted in recent years. In the 2020-21 school year, about 52% of PS7 teachers held an effective credential and two years later, that number fell to about 35%. Sacramento Charter High saw an even steeper decline, with around 63% in the 2020-21 school year, falling to around 26% by 2022-23.”

The St. Hope schools are operating in a poverty stricken neighborhood. However, the conditions in Oak Park, while still tough, have improved significantly, so these testing results are disheartening. The numbers in red indicate the gap between the state average and the school’s testing results. The level of negative results is concerning but even more concerning are their unfavorable comparisons between 2023 and 2024. The blue numbers in the right column indicate the changes between the two years.

When Sacramento Charter High School replaced Sacramento High School the enrollment was 1,800 students. By 2014, it had fallen to 986 students and in 2024 it reported just 413 students. St. Hope Ps7 reported 621 students in 2014. Its decrease is not so dramatic as the high school but Ps7 did lose a quarter of its enrollment reporting just 471 students in 2024.

Charter Renewal

To reiterate, the St. Hope schools have experienced a significant drop in percentage of credentialed teachers, they have horrible standardized testing results and enrollment at the schools is in serious decline. Yet, in September 2024, the Sacramento Unified school board voted 6 – 0 to renew the St. Hope charters for another 5 years.

If the board had not renewed the charters, St. Hope could have appealed to Sacramento County and if that did not work, they could have appealed to the State of California. One of the selling points for charter schools was that if they were not performing well, they would be closed. The reality is that a charter school in California is very difficult to close. Charter school reform legislation that is not driven by the charter school industry is needed.

The more I learn about Kevin Johnson and Michelle Rhee, the more I like them. I believe that their negative view of public education was a big mistake, but that they did care about schools and kids. Unfortunately, the privatization of public education is a huge mistake that is undermining American democracy.

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Billionaires Support Corrupted Science of Reading

1 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/1/2025

Science of Reading (SoR) was always a fraud; it is not based on sound science. In 1997, the National Reading Panel was established by congress and 21 volunteers were given 18 months to study reading education. They searched through academic papers, averaged results and made a report that billionaires now label the “science of reading.” June 25th, the oligarch established propagation rag, The 74, published yet another article employing obfuscation to sell SoR.

The article, “How Districts in Georgia, Maryland and D.C. Are Raising Reading Proficiency,” was written by Andrew Cuomo’s former education advisor, David Wakelyn PhD. While working for the National Governors Association, Wakelyn was part of the team that developed the Common Core State Standards. He also served as Deputy Secretary of Education in New York. Today, this former California school teacher has founded Upswing Labs where they conduct research supporting the SoR approach to literacy.

Selling SoR

The first article in a series of posts promoting the “Mississippi Miracle” was written by Wakelyn and Michael Hartney for the New York Post. Its headline read, “NYC should look to the Mississippi Miracle to learn how to teach reading.” Upswing Labs produced two papers in June called “Mississippi or Manhattan” and “Dynamic Districts & States: Where and How Literacy Is Improving.” The last article is Wakelyn’s The 74 article on June 25.

“Mississippi or Manhattan” presents the following graphic to show how superior Mississippi’s reading teaching is to New York City’s.

For unknown reasons, Wakelyn has converted the NAEP average scale scores to an undocumented grade equivalent. He claims one grade level is approximately 10 scale score points, but that makes no sense since the average scores are all above 200. However we do see that Mississippi had made impressive gains. A graph of the average scores shown below has the same shape as the Upswing Labs graph above.

The graph on the left is of the average NAEP scale score for 4th grade reading in Mississippi (red), national public schools average (blue) and New York City (green) years 2003 to 2024. (Note: only the symbols on the graphs represent real data; the lines do not.) The graph on the right is configured the same way for 8th grade testing data. The NAEP data reveals that by 8th grade all of Mississippi’s impressive 4th grade gains have vanished.

These results are likely the result of Mississippi’s mandatory retention policy for third graders whose testing does not achieve the requirements for advancement. By holding back almost 10% of their 3rd graders, Mississippi has by far the highest 3rd grade retention rate in the country. Average 3rd grade retention for all states is 3% and many states have less than a 2% rate. Obviously, Mississippi’s weakest students spend an extra year in 3rd grade so it makes sense that their 4th grade NAEP reading scores have improved but by 8th grade the gains are gone.

This is the basis of the “Mississippi Miracle” and like much of the billionaire financed education agenda, it is a fraud. David Wakelyn earned a doctorate of education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is certainly aware that the Mississippi data is problematic yet he promotes the distortion.

Maybe it is time for Universities like Wisconsin to consider rescinding doctoral degrees that are being used for lying to the public.   

The 74 Article

David Wakelyn’s article in The 74 is focused on selling the wonderful results from three exemplary districts, “Marietta City in the Atlanta suburbs; Allegany County, at the edge of the Appalachian Mountains in Maryland; and DC Prep, a K-8 public charter school network.” The three districts are small. The total numbers of 4th graders available for testing are DC Prep – 223, Marietta City – 681 and Allegany County – 553.

Wakelyn lauds the science of reading products these three districts have purchased. Why he chose them is a little mysterious. They are so small that they are statistically almost meaningless. He states:

“The districts launched deep, extended professional learning for all elementary teachers over two to three years.  Marietta City trained teachers with Top Ten Tools, a set of mini-courses on core elements of literacy and how to teach them, then added a year of training with Writing Revolution, a set of courses on teaching expository writing. In 2020, Allegany County began a two-year engagement with LETRS, to help teachers master the basics of reading and writing instruction — phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.”  

Top Ten Tools is a product of the 95 percent group inc. founded by Susan L. Hall. It has 220 employees and took in $7.4 million last year. They are one of the many companies working to profit off SoR. Hall is also a Sopris West certified trainer for DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) and LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling). She is the author of “I’ve DIBEL’d, Now What?,” and a co-author with Louisa C. Moats of two books.

In 2023, Rachel Cohen wrote an informative article about SoR, noting about LETRS:

“Despite its close associations with the “science of reading” — LETRS has its own middling track record of effectiveness. One experimental study found teachers who were trained by LETRS did improve in their knowledge of reading science, but their students did not have statistically higher differences in achievement than teachers in the control group.”

The Writing Revolution (TRW) comes out of work by Dr. Judith Hochman of New York. A 2012 award-winning feature article, “The Writing Revolution,” was published in The Atlantic about The Hochman Method giving her national exposure. In 2014, TRW became a 501 C3 tax-exempt non-profit. TRW is not an SoR focused company but they are profiting off public education and like many of today’s non-profit organizations have multiple 6-figure earners (TIN: 46-4970867).

Wakelyn also stated in The 74:

Both Marietta and Allegany improved the quality of their K-5 language arts curricula.  Marietta dropped giving students books they could already read — a popular practice that hasn’t been found to facilitate learning — and switched to Wit and Wisdom and a skills-based foundational class. Allegany stopped using Treasures and switched to Core Knowledge Language Arts. Both are highly rated by independent reviewers and are designed to build a deep and wide knowledge base using grade-level texts in science, history, literature and the arts.  

The “hasn’t been found to facilitate learning” comment is based on a blog by Timothy Shanahan. An early commenter to Shanahan’s post did not like that the article focused on learning level with no mention of content. The writer states, “I’m a retired elementary teacher and school principal, and it has been my experience that students are often thrilled to read materials whose content they find interesting or unique.”   

“Wit and Wisdom” is a scripted curriculum that has enemies on both the right and left.

Since “Treasures” is no longer in print, I would expect that schools are replacing it.

Core Knowledge Language Arts is controlled by Amplify and billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs. It is only lauded by other billionaire-controlled entities.

Conclusion

SoR is a dressed up version of George W. Bush’s Reading First Initiative from 2001. In 2008, The Center for Public Integrity reported, “An April 2008 study revealed the general ineffectiveness of Reading First and found that students in schools receiving funds for the program had no better reading skills than children in schools that did not.” Unfortunately, billionaire dollars kept the SoR malarkey alive.

The real reason for promoting SoR is the billionaire plan for resting control of education away from universities and ending democratic control of schools. The agenda is for all teacher education and training to be privatized. Organizations like TNTP and Relay Graduate School are sub-standard billionaire financed entities with political clout pushing aside public institutions.  

For billionaires, SoR has never been about better reading education. It is just one more element in their drive to eliminate democracy.

The “greedy bastards” lust for power and wealth is perverting everything.

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Bizarre WAPO Opinion Piece by Hanushek and Raymond

18 Jun

By Thomas Ultican 6/17/2025

It was “déjà vu all over again” when Eric Hanushek and his wife Macke Raymond shared their views in the Washington Post. They cited Michelle Rhee and Mike Miles as exemplary education leaders, merit pay as good education policy and turned to A Nation at Risk for support. Governor Abbott took over Houston’s schools and installed Miles as superintendent but here Hanushek and Raymond were referencing his long ago stint in Dallas.

I am no longer a reader of the Washington Post. When Bezos decided his paper would not endorse a candidate for president, I cancelled my subscription. However, a friend felt I needed to see this article and sent me a copy.

Billionaires like Bezos are destroying America and all of its venerable institutions. Hanushek and Raymond are Stanford based billionaire tools.

While working on her PhD in Political Science at the University of Rochester, Macky fell in love with her much older professor, Eric Hanushek, and eventually married him.

Today, Raymond is the director of CREEDO. Her 2015 Hoover Institute Fellow’s profile says in part, “In partnership with the Walton Family Foundation and Pearson Learning Systems, Raymond is leading a national study of the effectiveness of public charter schools.” 

Are the billionaires guarding the hen house?

Rhee and Miles

The Hanushek and Raymond opinion piece states:

“In 2009, under the leadership of then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Washington implemented the IMPACT program — a revamped teacher evaluation system that is linked directly to classroom effectiveness and that provides large increases in base salaries for the most effective teachers and dismissal for the least effective. This program has shown that focusing on student learning is rewarded with improved student performance, and that student-focused incentives work.”

This is a totally bunkum statement and is followed by another world of bunkum claim:

“Under the leadership of then-Superintendent Mike Miles, Dallas in 2015 switched to a salary system based on a sophisticated evaluation of teacher effectiveness. It then used this system to provide performance-based bonuses to teachers who would agree to go to the lowest-performing schools in the district. Two things happened: First, the best teachers responded to the incentives and were willing to move to the poorest-performing schools. Second, within two years, these schools jumped up to the district average.”

The linked evidence in the Dallas claim is to an Education Next article written by Hanushek and friends. In it, he claimed, “In the four years after Dallas adopted new performance-based teacher evaluation and compensation systems, student performance on standardized tests improved by 16 percent of a standard deviation in math and 6 percent in reading, while scores for a comparison group of similar Texas schools remained flat.”

Sixteen percent of a standard deviation of growth in math after 4 years sounds weak and 6% of a standard deviation growth in reading does not seem much more the noise in the data.

Hanushek gained notoriety with his 1981 paper, claiming “there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters.” This played well with billionaires from the Walton family but had no relationship with reality. The history of crazy pants unsupported statements like this have long caused me to seek verification for whatever he says.

Hanushek and Raymond claim that both Dallas and Washington DC saw comparatively superior testing outcomes than other urban areas in the US. The evidence they provide is a link to the NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (tuda). I graphed 4th and 8th grade math tuda data between 2009 and 2024 for the Large City composite, Dallas, DC, Baltimore and San Diego. Nothing substantive popped out in my graphs.

I decided to subtract the 4th grade scores from the 8th grade scores to get a sense of how the students were progressing. The results graphed below stunned me with their clarity. Baltimore, which traditionally has low scores, San Diego, which traditionally scores well and the Large City composite had fairly consistent increases of about 40 points. Dallas and DC both fell below a 30 points increase.

Billionaires Take Over

Michelle Rhee came out of Teach for America (TFA) where she taught for three years in a Baltimore elementary school. She returned to New York, TFA and Wendy Kopp to help found the New Teachers Project which is now known as TNTP. New York Chancellor of Public Schools, Joe Klein, who worked for multi-billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, recommended the 37-year-old Rhee to be Washington DC’s new superintendent.

During Rhee’s three year reign of terror, she replaced half of DC’s teachers and a third of its principals. She was consumed with raising test scores and scorned those who did not share her devotion to standardized testing. Her relentless pressure to raise test scores brought some early gains and produced a major cheating scandal.

DC principal, Adell Cothorne, lost her job for insisting upon increased test security when she learned that teachers were violating testing protocols. I had lunch with Adell at the 2015 NPE conference in Chicago. She struck me as a proud Black woman with poise, immense courage and profound character.

After Rhee left DC schools, she started StudentsFirst and led a national crusade to abolish teacher tenure and promote school choice. Billionaires and their friends provided her organization with millions of dollars. (Reign of Error Pages 145-155)

Before 2012, Dallas school board elections were very low key affairs. Two of the three incumbent school board trustees up for reelection ran unopposed in 2011.

Writing for In These Times, George Joseph explained the political change, “But since the beginning of 2012, hundreds of thousands of Super PAC dollars from Dallas’ richest neighborhoods began flowing into nearly all of the district’s school board elections.” 

The billionaires contributing included Ross Perot, Ray Hunt and Justice Thomas’s buddy Harlan Crow.

Once the new 2012 board was seated, it fired Superintendent Michael Hinojosa and replaced him with Mike Miles, a graduate of billionaire Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy.

The article “Dallas Chamber of Commerce Disrupts Dallas Schools” summarized Miles three year tenure:

“Miles’s reforms included a new principal evaluation process which led to large turnover. He also instituted a merit pay system for teachers and hired Charles Glover a 29-year-old administrator of the Dallas TFA branch to be Chief Talent Officer in DISD. After just under three years, he had managed to alienate the black and Hispanic communities as well as many experienced teachers and principals.”

Like Michelle Rhee, he also believed in standardized test based accountability and merit pay.

Concluding Information

Reporting for NPR on the 35th anniversary of A Nation at Risk, Ana Kamenetz discovered, “They started out already alarmed by what they believed was a decline in education, and looked for facts to fit that narrative.”

A decade before Ana’s report, Florida education professor, James Guthrie, noted, “They cooked the books to get what they wanted.”

In 1990, Sandia engineers set out to add weight to A Nation at Risk. They disaggregated the data by race and sex and were surprise to find that every group advanced during the 1963 to 1980 period. The growing numbers of SAT test takers was driven by poor, minority and female students, causing the test averages to drop.

A Nation at Risk was a fraudulent paper and America’s students were actually healthy and doing well, which means public schools were healthy and doing well.

Merit pay is a Taylorist scheme that appeals to many American business leaders, but has a long history of employee dissatisfaction and output quality issues. Researchers at Vanderbilt University studied merit pay for teachers and found no significant gains in testing data and in New York researchers documented negative results.

Unfortunately, billionaires own the media and publish opinion pieces by hired frauds like Hanushek and Raymond.

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Pro-choice Penny Nominated to Ed

10 Jun

By Thomas Ultican 6/10/2025

Penny Schwinn is a perfect fit as Trump’s education department’s number two. Her record of controversy and making suspicious contracts is noteworthy. Born 10/13/1982 in Sacramento, California, to a school teacher mom, her entrance into education came in Baltimore as a Teach for America (TFA) corps member. Helped out by the Walton Family Foundation, she founded a charter school in her home town and served as its principal. Her successful 2012 run for the Sacramento County school board was a battle between school choice proponents and public school advocates. Schwinn’s campaign was significantly financed by the California Charter Schools Association (billionaire money).

January 21, Jennah Pendleton reporting for the Sacramento Bee wrote:

“Trump announced his choice in a Truth Social post Friday, repeatedly misidentifying Schwinn as ‘Peggy.’ He wrote that ‘Peggy’ has a ‘strong record of delivering results for children and families’ and that she is ‘committed to delivering the American Dream to the next Generation by returning Education BACK TO THE STATES.”’

Both the billionaire funded “The 74” and the University of Florida referenced Penny as a woman of color. Having such a light complexion, in days of yore, she could have easily passed.

Following her 3 year stint in Baltimore with TFA, she has been on the move in search of higher positions. After being elected to the county school board, she left that position to take an administrative role with the Sacrament Unified School District.

She soon traveled to Delaware and became Chief Officer in the state Office of Assessment, Accountability, Performance & Evaluation. See her listing on the Delaware 2015 org chart. It should be noted that Penny believes in testing to evaluate schools, curriculum and students.

In 2016, she was on the move again; this time to Texas serving in several positions including Chief Deputy Commissioner of Academics at the Texas Education Agency (TEA). It was here that her penchant for not following the law caused problems.

On November 21, 2017, special education director, Laurie Kash, blew the whistle on TEA entering into a $4.4 million no-bid contract with SPEDx, a special education data contracting company. The following day Kash was fired.

Kash fought the firing and won a wrongful termination suit. Louisiana educator, Mercedes Schneider searched the court documents and found Kash’s claim “that Schwinn had a personal relationship with at least one of the leaders of the SPEDx / Cambria contract group and part of the group that developed the project …”

Related to this claim, the Texas Tribune reported,

“State auditors also said the TEA failed to ‘identify and address a preexisting professional relationship’ between a SPEDx subcontractor and the agency’s “primary decision maker” for the contract. Penny Schwinn — that decision maker and the agency’s deputy commissioner of academics — did not disclose that she had received professional development training from the person who ultimately became a subcontractor on the project.”

The Cambria group mentioned in the law suit profits from the science of reading. Cambria’s business units are Learning A-Z, Lexia Learning, Voyager Sopris, ExploreLearning, Cambium Assessment, Kurzweil Education, and VKidz.

Schwinn left Texas to become Tennessee’s education commissioner effective February 2019. By November 15, Chalkbeat was reporting, “Tennessee’s education department has experienced an exodus under Commissioner Penny Schwinn, with almost a fifth of its employees leaving in the nine months since she took over.”

In Tennessee, Schwinn inked a $16 million dollar contract with TNTP to train teachers. It was soon unfavorably noticed that her husband, who also started in education with TFA, was a leader of this TFA spinoff company.

Schwinn led the Tennessee department through implementation of Governor Bill Lee’s school voucher program. This led to angering Tennessee legislators over her making a $2.5 million no-bid contract with ClassWallet to run the Education Savings Account program.

Schwinn announced she was leaving her Tennessee position June 1, 2023.

Some Conservatives Oppose this Nomination

The billionaire founded education propaganda rag, The 74, praised Schwinn for the wonderful reading results she achieved in Tennessee. They highlighted the way she used the states new literacy Law to train 30,000 teachers in the science of reading. Supposedly, some recent testing results documented her success. However, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) apparently does not agree. The graph of average 8th grade reading scores below shows Tennessee at the national average in 2015 and still at the national average in 2024. Not bad but nothing to brag about.

Some conservatives oppose Schwinn’s nomination.

A few groups are bothered by her affiliation with Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. Most people think of Chiefs for Change as an edtech promoting and school privatization organization. Surprisingly, some conservatives believe it is made up of left-leaning district and state officials.

Robin Steenman, the president of Tennessee’s Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty, has been vocal in her opposition to Schwinn’s use of the Great Minds’ Wit & Wisdom English language arts curriculum. She believes it is too DEI focused.

Robby Starbuck, whose wife sees pornography everywhere, wrote on X:

“Penny Schwinn was pro-masking kids, she tried to force child “wellbeing checks” during COVID, she referred to kids as the state’s children and she allowed CRT + pornographic books in schools even after our state banned them. I hope President Trump will reconsider her nomination.”

Posts like this prompted the infamous Chris Rufo to leap to her defense stating, “First, Penny did not allow “porn in schools” while she was education commissioner in Tennessee.” He went on to claim:

“After spending some time with Penny, I’m confident that she will be a great Deputy Secretary of Education. During our meeting, she personally committed to me that she will work to (a) shut down the terrible programs at the Department of Education; (b) fight critical race theory, gender cultism, and DEI in America’s schools; and (c) support new initiatives on school choice and classical education.”

Evidently from Rufo’s perspective, that is all good.

Conclusion

Schwinn’s financial statement says she has hardly been starving since leaving Tennessee. She lists earnings from advisory fees of $155k from TVG-MGT, $125k from Edmentum, $125k from Really Great Reading, $250k from the Walton Family Foundation, $500k from Chief for Change and several more. It is hard to believe these payments were for advice so what are they really for? She also lists holdings in several edtech companies mostly focused on science of reading.

With their spines clearly challenged – no liberals other than fake ones like Rahm Emmanuel – have said anything about this nomination. Rahm and his DEFR friend, Jorge Elorza, are for it.

While Penny Schwinn in clearly after money, she does have a strong background in education. This makes her the most qualified of Trump’s nominations for any of his cabinet level departments.

Being both pro-choice and pro-testing makes her a nauseating choice for me. However, when compared with previous nominations, the billionaire oligarchs, who are stealing the wealth of the middle class in America, have made this terrible choice look OK.

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Big Changes and Controversy in Oakland

4 Jun

By Thomas Ultican 6/4/2025

It is always interesting in Oakland. A new school board with an education aligned majority was accused of firing the popular superintendent, Kyla Johnson-Trammell. There was some reality underlining the unfounded claim but she was not fired. One of the culprits responsible for the claim was my friend and long time Oakland activist, Mike Hutchinson. On this issue, he has aligned himself with the corporatist board faction which is a bad look for his brand.

Siding with Mike on this issue were board members Patrice Berry and Clifford Thomson. Some people might have a problem with labeling Berry and Thomson the corporatist faction however that is exactly how they appear. Empower Oakland and Families in Action supported both of these board members in the recent election. Left Coast Right Watch wrote about the two main leaders of Empower Oakland:

“The digital leadership consists of two people: Gagan Biyani, a tech CEO, and Reze Wong, a venture capitalist. Empower Oakland has deep ties to the crypto community, receiving contributions from Jesse Pollak, the founder of Coinbase, and Ilya Sukhar, a venture capitalist.”

Oaklanside, a local Oakland digital news source, wrote of Families in Action:

“Families in Action previously had a political action committee called the Families in Action for Justice Fund, which evolved out of a group called Power2Families that launched in 2020 to support charter-friendly candidates. That year, the committee received money from individuals like Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, Stacy Schusterman, an oil heiress and philanthropist, and Arthur Rock, a Silicon Valley investor.”

Patrice Berry is the chief impact officer at End Poverty in California, a nonprofit that advocates for a more equitable economy. Berry obviously has some good instincts. However, she was an advisor to the notoriously anti-public schools Oakland mayor, Libby Schaaf.

In his first run for the board (2020), Clifford Thomson received contributions from charter schools like Latitude 37.8 High School and Bay Tech Charter. He also was financially supported by the billionaire funded Educate78 as well as leaders from the Rogers Foundation and leaders at the corporate supported Partners In School Innovation.

Creating Chaos and Disunity

At the 2017 Network for Public Education conference in Oakland, I attended a presentation by a group of women who founded Educators for Democratic Schools (EDS). The group was made up of recently retired Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) educators fighting school privatization. Periodically they send me things they publish. Their May 26 report was called “Debunking False Narratives about the Oakland School Board.”

April 10th, Mike Hutchinson defied California rules for school board executive sessions and stated, “The board just voted today to force the superintendent out at the end of the year…” Board President Jennifer Brouhard interrupted him and said he was violating California law. She also tersely stated “The board took no final action.”

Following Hutchinson’s further statements and media coverage, Brouhard clarified:

“There is premature information in the media regarding the OUSD Superintendent transition. If there’s a vote in closed session to end the contract of the superintendent, it must be reported in open session immediately after. As reported out in open session, the board took no final action on the public employment item in closed session.”

Some members of the Oakland community have concluded that Hutchinson has become a toxic board member. Breach of confidentiality is one of the traits of a toxic board member cited by OnBoard.

Hutchinson was not wrong that the board wanted to end the relationship with Johnson-Trammell by the end of the year but calling it forcing her out is misleading.

The previous board worried that when Johnson-Trammell’s contract ended June 30, 2025, that they would be unable to agree on a new superintendent and asked her to stay two more years while they conducted a hunt for her replacement. To incentivize the request, they raise her salary to $640,000 and gave her the option to work on outside-the-district paid jobs. This contract was signed in August, 2024.

EDS reported:

“This year’s new Board majority, which took office in January 2025, had several reservations about the August 2024 contract:

“It required large expenditures in a time of fiscal constraints.

“Some Board members felt the selection of interim leadership was their prerogative.

“The contract gave Superintendent Johnson-Trammell authority but no daily responsibility, while those performing “routine leadership tasks” would have responsibility but no authority.

“Some Board members were concerned that transition planning by a lame-duck superintendent would discourage new applicants for the position.”

Evidently productive negotiations between the board and Johnson-Trammell occurred. On July 1, 2025, Denise Sadler will become interim superintendent. Johnson-Trammell will remain as superintendent emeritus until January 1, 2026. Sadler has for several years served in many administrative roles. She is liked and respected and in the early 1990s, she was president of the Oakland Educators Association.

The Good, Bad and Ugly

Kyla Johnson-Trammell is both revered and despised. In 2003, the state of California forced OUSD to accept a $100 million loan and took over the district. In 2009, the elected school board was reinstated but all budgets had to be pre-approved. Kyla became superintendent in 2017. Under her watch, the big loan has been slowly paid off and this June the final payment will be made which will end extra state and county oversight. In some circles, she is given great credit for this but not so much in others.

One long time pro-public education activist strongly expressed to me how much she admires and respects Kyla. 

I, on the other hand, got a jaundiced view of Kyla when shortly after becoming superintendent she was listed as a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. Throughout her tenure, she pushed to close schools and promoted education technology. Closing schools would bring a very small reduction in costs but remove local public school options from communities that have long been targeted by the billionaire financed charter school industry.

Even in her outgoing remarks, she touted AI as a way to individualize student learning.

In 2021 Jan Malvin PhD, one of the EDS members, took a close look at the strategic plan update for early literacy. She shared the following graphic from the Kyla’s presentation.

Malvin observed:

“After the Superintendent presented her Strategic Plan Update for Early literacy in 2021, I looked up the 18 organizations on this slide. Of the 18, 13 appear to have a pro-charter schools bias, 1 has a pro-public schools bias (Oakland Public Library); and I was unable to determine any bias for 4 organizations.”

It is good news that billionaire spending on elections and charter schools has receded. Just before November’s election, Ashley McBride reported,

“Oakland school board races draw less spending by political groups this year – In past elections, billionaires, charter school groups, and unions spent heavy supporting and opposing candidates. While the union is still active, other groups are spending less.”

It is also healthy to observe that the relentless charter school growth in Oakland has reversed. The following chart using state attendance data shows the percentage of charter school students in Oakland has been declining since 2019.

There are big problems with this year’s budget that the school board will have to address. School districts throughout California are dealing with declining enrollment which is creating deficits. In Oakland, that decline is almost 5,600 students since 2017 leaving an estimated deficit of $75 million.

I am confident this board majority will put students and staff first when dealing with today’s financial issues.

Congratulations Oakland for getting out from under state control!!!

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California Charter School Movement Update

25 May

By Thomas Ultican 5/25/2025

Charter schools continue grabbing larger percentages of California students and have surpassed 700,000 in total enrollment. Their existing in California for more than 30-years means it is probable that some charter school students have parents who went to charters. None of this is because charter schools are superior to public schools or that many California public schools are bad. It is the right wing ideology of “school choice” and massive spending by billionaires driving charter growth. Sadly, it means we are undermining democracy and increasing segregation.

California enrollment data documents the continuing charter school growth. This first chart is of the percentage of charter school students in the state over the past decade.

As the chart shows, charter school students now make up 12.5% of publicly financed students in California.

This next chart is of charter school growth in the 12 largest California counties. It provides insight into where the growth is occurring.

The four counties with more than 16% charter school students are Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and San Joaquin. LA and San Diego are the two largest counties in the state but Sacramento is number six in size and San Joaquin is 11th. The third largest county in California is Orange and it only has a 6% charter enrollment. County population is not a good indicator for where charter schools will spread.

The growth in San Joaquin seems to have two important causes. The largest city, Stockton, is close to charter promoting organizations in Oakland and Sacramento. More importantly, Don Shalvey has always lived on his small ranch near Stockton. During his long education-centered career, he worked with billionaires including Reed Hastings, Bill Gates and Helen Schwab, to privatize public education. In 1993, Don’s San Carlos Learning Center became the first charter school in California and second in America. After retiring from his job at the Gates Foundation, he went to work for a small non-profit, San Joaquin A+, and turned it into a large well financed charter school promoting organization.

Massive Continuous Funding

Soon after legal means were provided for “school choice” by chartering, two organizations were developed to accelerate and sustain California charter schools; NewSchools Venture Fund (NSVF) and California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).

The history tab at the NSVF website states:

“NewSchools Venture Fund was created in 1998 by social entrepreneur Kim Smith and venture capitalists John Doerr and Brook Byers.” (Byers and Doerr are colleagues from the Kleiner Perkins venture fund.)

“We were among the first and largest investors in public charter schools and the first to identify and support multisite charter management organizations, which launch and operate integrated networks of public charter schools.”

Philanthropy Magazine notes that Reed Hastings helped “launch the NewSchools Venture Fund.”

Bill Gates and the Walton Family Foundation are the largest individual donors to NSVF with $226,881,394 of grants documented in Organized to Disrupt. However, this is only a fraction of the total billionaire largess. Besides receiving help from Reed Hastings over the last 20 years, billionaires John Doerr, Laurene Powell Jobs and John Sackler also served on the board.

CCSA is a charter school industry membership and support organization. In 2017, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education (NPE), Carol Burris, published Charter and Consequences. In this yearlong study of the charter school industry, she noted:

“CCSA does not disclose its funders on its website nor on its 990 form, but given its Board of Directors, who makes the list of big donors is not difficult to guess.

“The 2017 Board of Directors include New York’s DFER founder, Joe Williams, a director of the Walton Education Coalition; Gregory McGinty, the Executive Director of Policy for the Broad Foundation; Neerav Kingsland, the CEO of the Hastings Fund; and Christopher Nelson, the Managing Director of the Doris & Donald Fisher Fund. Prior Board members include Reed Hastings of Netflix and Carrie Walton Penner, heir to the Walmart fortune.

“The real power, however, sits in CCSA’s related organization, CCSA Advocates, a not-for-profit 501(c)(4) whose mission is to increase the political clout of charter schools on local school boards, on county boards, and in Sacramento.”

Beyond creating and financing organizations like NSVF and CCSA, a quick peek at any of the non-profit foundations these billionaires own reveals page after page of donations to individual charter schools and charter organizations.

Let’s not forget the $440 million federal dollars ticketed for charter school growth. Last year California’s share was $93 million and this year Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, has raised that bribe to $500 million. California’s share will likely top $100 million.   

Buying Politicians

This morning the San Diego Union ran Kristen Taketa’s article about insider concerns over a small California charter school network, Elite Academic Academy. Former teacher Eric Shirley who taught home-school students there said he left after 5 years because he found several things fishy about the administration. That included Elite’s CEO, Meghan Freeman, living in a Montana resort town being paid more than $380,000 while founder Brent Woodward was still profiting from the academy.

Taketa shared,

“But Shirley’s biggest concern was that Elite was paying millions of dollars a year to an obscure third-party corporation — one created by Woodard. This corporation not only employs family members of Elite administrators in high-level jobs but also has paid him six-figure sums each year as a consultant.”

Shirley is one of three former Elite teachers who believe their charter network is the latest example of an operator of charter schools exploiting lax charter laws to misuse taxpayer funds.

In 2019, a San Diego Grand Jury indicted A3 charter school leaders for fraud and theft. The A3 Charter School conspirators fraudulently collected $400 million from the state of California, misappropriated more than $200 million and according to the Voice of San Diego’s Will Huntsberry outright stole $80 million. However, no effective measures have been taken since to remediate California’s laws.

Taking advantage of the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, billionaires have poured huge sums of money into California’s state and local elections. Most of this money hides in independent expenditure groups like EDVOICE FOR THE KIDS PAC; CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION ADVOCATES INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE COMMITTEE; CA CHARTER SCHOOL ASSOC INDEP EXP COMMITTEE; EDVOICE INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE COMMITTEE; KIDS FIRST, SUPPORTING KELLY GONEZ, NICK MELVOIN, AND MARIA BRENES FOR LAUSD SCHOOL BOARD 2022 and KIDS FIRST, SUPPORTING TANYA ORTIZ FRANKLIN FOR LAUSD SCHOOL BOARD 2020.

Most of this Money went to LA School Board Elections

In 2019, James Walton of Arkansas made contributions to 29 California legislative candidates plus Reed Hastings provided contributions to 69 local and state political candidates. These are examples of billionaires buying influence.

A New Effort

California Assembly Bill 84 sponsored by Robert Garcia [D] and Al Muratsuchi [D] was voted out of the Assembly Committee on Education by a party line vote and forwarded to the Appropriations Committee on Friday (5/23/2025). The Assembly Appropriations Committee analysis summarizes:

“This bill establishes new requirements for charter schools and nonclassroom based (NCB) charter schools regarding auditing and accounting standards, and the funding determination process. This bill adds requirements to the contracting process, limits authorization of NCB charter schools by small school districts, makes changes to the authorizer oversight process, and clarifies that charter schools are subject to specified teacher credential and salary expense requirements.”

Since the criminality of the A3 charter organization, bills to solve the lack of charter school oversight in California have been proposed regularly. This time around, The Assembly Committee on Education Analysis lists almost 200 charter schools dutifully opposing the new bill.

The billionaire backers of “school choice” dislike lawmakers working to safeguard taxpayer supplied education dollars. Will the plutocrats win again or will Californians finally be protected from criminal education enterprises?

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