By Thomas Ultican 11/2/2023
NPE met at the Capitol Hilton for a weekend conference beginning on Friday, October 27. The old hotel seemed well maintained. That first evening, Diane Ravitch interviewed James Harvey who was a key contributor to “A Nation at Risk.” We gathered in a larger conference room which caused Mr. Harvey to comment, “I remember being at a meeting in this room fifty years ago when we heard that Alexander Butterfield had just testified that there were tapes of the oval office.”
With that historical reference, the conference was off to a wonderful start.
“A Nation at Risk” is seen as an unfair turning point that undermined public education. Mr. Harvey’s job was to synthesize the input from members of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, created by Secretary of Education, Terrence Bell, and produce the report. He shared that two famous academics on the panel, Nobel Prize winner, Glen Seaborg, and physicist, Gerald Holton, were the driving forces for politicizing public education.
Diane Ravitch and James Harvey
That first night’s presentation was actually an added event for the benefit of us coming in on Friday afternoon. The conference had three keynote addresses, two panel discussions and seven breakout sessions. It was difficult to choose which breakout sessions to attend.
Pastors for Children
For session one, I attended “Mobilizing Faith Leaders as Public Education Allies.” The amazing founder of Pastors for Children, Charles Foster Johnson, and his two cohorts were well reasoned and did not proselytize us. Their movement really does seem to be about helping communities and not building their church. Among Johnson’s points were:
- “Privatized religion teachers believe ‘God likes my tribe best.”‘
- “We are the reason there is not a voucher program in Texas.”
- “Conservatives and liberals come together over education.”
- “Faith leaders have a different effect when lobbying politicians.”
- “We are making social justice warriors out of fundamentalist Baptist preachers.”
Houston School Takeover
I have no intention of writing about each of the 7 sessions I attended, but the session on the Houston School District takeover needs mention.
Texas took-over Houston Independent School District (ISD) on June 1, 2023. It is the largest school district in the state and eighth largest in the country with more than 180,000 students attending 274 schools. The student demographics are 62% Hispanic, 22% African-American, 10% White and 4% Asian, with 79% identified as economically disadvantaged.
In 2021, Millard House II was selected by a unanimous vote of the Houston ISD school board to be Superintendent. Under his leadership, Houston ISD was rated a B+ district, a school in one of Houston’s poorest neighborhoods, and used to excuse the takeover received a passing grade on Texas’s latest STAR testing. The takeover board replaced House with Mike Miles, a charter school operator from Colorado, previously lasted 2 years of his five-year contract, to lead the Dallas ISD.
Ruth Kravetz talked at some length about the how angry Houstonians are and their effective grassroots organizing. Kravetz stated, “We want Mike Miles gone.” She noted that the local media started turning against the takeover when citizens were locked out of the first takeover board meetings.
Kravetz intoned:
- “Teachers no longer need a certificate or college degree to teach in Houston ISD.”
- “Seven year-olds are not allowed to use restrooms during instructional times. They must wait.”
- “People are being fired for ridiculous reasons. Five people were fired last week over a made up story.”
- Expect more student action against the takeover.
- “Rolling sickouts are coming.”
Jessica Campos is a mother in one of Houston’s poorest communities. She said her school is made up of 98% Mexicans with 68% of them being Spanish speakers. She claims, “Our school community has been destroyed”, and reported all teachers were removed with many, replaced by uncertified teachers.
Daniel Santos (High School social studies teacher) said:
“It is all about dismantling our school district. We wear red-for-Ed every Wednesday and Mayor Turner lights up city hall in red.”
The Keynote Addresses
Gloria Ladson-Billings from the University of Wisconsin Madison delivered the first Keynote address on Saturday morning.
She said that we were really dealing with 4 pandemics:
- Covid-19
- George Floyd murder
- “Economic Shesession” (Large numbers of women were forced to leave the workforce.)
- Climate catastrophe
Professor Ladson-Billings claims the larger agenda is the complete eradication of public education in what she sees as an evolving effort:
- The evacuation of the public spaces which are being privatized.
- Affordable, Reliable and Dependable (public space keys) is being undermined.
- Public housing is closing.
- The last domino is public education!
Ladson-Billings says, “choice is a synonym for privatization.” There is money in the public and wealthy elites do not think the public should have it. Also noted was “We are in the business of citizen making.” We do not want to go back to normal because it was not that great and ending on a positive note, “All is not lost – people on the ground in Florida are working hard to reverse it.”
History Professor Marvin Dunn from Florida was the lunch time keynote speaker. He has been working hard to educate the children of Florida about the states’ racist past, including giving guided tours of the site of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre of an African American community.
He noted that “Racism is in our national DNA” and shared that George Washington owned 500+ slaves. When he was 11 years-old, Washington was given his first slave. Still, 500 black soldiers were with him at the crossing of the Delaware river.
Another American icon mentioned by Professor Dunn was Thomas Jefferson. The third president of the United States was 41 years-old when first having sexual relations with Sally Hemings; she was 14.
Julian Vasquez Heilig, Josh Cowen and Jon Hale held a late afternoon public discussion on Saturday. The moderator, Heilig, made the point that instead of funding one system, now many states are funding three systems with the same amount of dollars.
Josh Cowen, from Michigan State University, noted that using evidence based data since 2013, vouchers have been catastrophic. If we were using evidence informed education policy, vouchers would have died 5 years ago. Test score losses from voucher students are greater than those experienced in either Katrina or Covid-19. He also noted that 20% – 30% of children give up their voucher each year.
He added don’t believe a word coming out of Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’ mouth. She has instituted vouchers, opposed abortion and supported child labor.
Reynolds is pushing Christian nationalism.
Jon Hale, from the University of Illinois says white architects of choice have a 70 year history. He says it was never about improving schools. The white supremacist movement sprung up after Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954.
Becky Pringle of the National Education Association and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers joined in conversation with Diane Ravitch.
Becky Pringle stated that the attack on public education is deliberate and schools must be reclaimed as a common good noting that more than 50% of today’s students are of color.
Pringle claimed that every single social system in the country is under attack and declared forcefully that elections matter!!
Weingarten asked how many schools are not talking about what is going on in the Middle East right now because they are scared stiff? She made three important points:
- “The tool of the autocrat is apathy.”
- “Find the things that unite us.”
- “Make schools fun.”
The last Keynote speaker was Georgina Perez, Texas State School Board member from 2017 until January 2023.
Georgina introduced herself as a chick from west Texas and obviously there was real steel there. She said, regarding vouchers, “It is completely asinine to take a nickel from the 95% of students and give it to the 5%.”
Being from the border area, she naturally was looking out for the border raised students. Georgina said I could see that all of the “Spanish language EL’s were not dropping out; they were being pushed out.” In order to get what she wanted for them, she needed to work with some very staunch conservatives and was quite successful at it. For example, she got ethnics studies by having a steak dinner and drinking with David Bradley, making a friend. She is a powerful example of how conservatives and liberals can work together for education.
What I Found
Several participants showed up kind of down in the mouth. However, by the end of the conference they were heading back home with new energy and resolve. Billionaires are spending vast sums of money trying to end public school because if public education goes then all of the commons will follow. Their big problem is that vast wealth and spending is not a match for the grassroots organizing that is happening throughout America.
Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris and the members of NPE have become a bulwark for democracy and public education.
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