Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Other Scholars Respond as Ron DeSantis Whitewashs African American Studies

In a powerful NY Times column, the director of the Harvard University Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. places Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at the center the resurgent welling up of racism in America.

Dr. Gates explains that DeSantis’s intervention in the adoption of a College Board AP Curriculum in African American Studies, “falls squarely in line with a long tradition of bitter, politically suspect battles over the interpretation of three seminal periods in the history of American racial relations:  the Civil War;  the 12 years following the war, known as Reconstruction;  and Reconstruction’s brutal rollback, characterized by its adherents as the former Confederacy’s ‘Redemption,’ which saw the imposition of Jim Crow segregation, the reimposition of white supremacy and their justification through a masterfully executed propaganda effort.”

DeSantis’s attempts to eliminate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from Florida’s colleges and universities and his efforts to intimidate the College Board to revise its proposed Advanced Placement class in African American Studies according to the racist demands made by himself and his staff are blatant examples of DeSantis’s appeal to white supremacy as a political strategy.

It is telling that after negotiations with DeSantis’s staff, the College Board removed the word “systemic” as a descriptor for racism in America. The Washington Post’s Nick Anderson explains what happened to the word “systemic” as the College Board developed its new curriculum for an AP African American Studies class: “The College Board, which oversees the AP program denies that it diluted the African American studies course in response to complaints from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) or his allies. But a senior College Board official now acknowledges the organization was mindful of how ‘systemic’ and certain other words in the modern lexicon of race in America would receive intense scrutiny in some places. ‘All of those terms were going to be challenging,’ said Jason Manoharan, vice president for AP program development.”

To say that racism is systemic is a way to point out that racism is more serious and more pervasively detrimental than mere personal prejudice. For example, in The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein documents a history of systemic housing discrimination—insurance redlining and the denial of FHA loans, for example—policies which have historically reduced housing opportunity for African American families. And constitutional scholar and education historian Derek Black points out that school funding is systemically unequal: “Achievement, segregation, and funding data all indicate that poor and minority students are receiving vastly unequal educational opportunities. For instance, predominantly minority schools receive about $2,000 less per student than predominantly white schools.”

Anderson reports: “The February 2022 version (of the College Board’s proposed curriculum) declared that students should learn how African American communities combat effects of ‘systemic marginalization.’ An April update paired ‘systemic’ with discrimination, oppression, inequality, disempowerment and racism. A December version said it was essential to know links between Black Panther activism and ‘systemic inequality that disproportionately affected African Americans.’ Then the word vanished. ‘Systemic,’ a crucial term for many scholars and civil rights advocates, appears nowhere in the official version released Feb. 1. This late deletion and others reflect the extraordinary political friction that often shadows efforts in the nation’s schools to teach about history, culture, and race.”

In his column last week, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. compares Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s efforts to whitewash history to the efforts of Mildred Lewis Rutherford, “a descendant of a long line of slave owners.” Rutherford published a pamphlet in 1920, “A Measuring Rod to Test Textbooks, and Reference Books in Schools, Colleges, and Libraries,” to help educators ban any books “which do not accord full justice to the South.” She wanted students to learn that slavery itself “was an education that taught the negro self-control, obedience, and perseverance.”

Dr. Gates concludes: “Is it fair to see Governor DeSantis’s attempts to police the contents of the College Board’s AP curriculum in African American Studies in classrooms in Florida solely as little more than a contemporary version of Mildred Rutherford’s Lost Cause textbook campaign? No. But the governor would do well to consider the company that he is keeping… While most certainly not embracing her cause, Mr. DeSantis is complicitous in perpetuating her agenda.”

Dr. Gates is not the only scholar who has expressed outrage and concern about Governor DeSantis’s apparent determination to omit part of our history from his state’s public schools. Last week, in a letter to David Coleman, the CEO of the College Board, more than 1000 faculty “who teach, write, research and lead in the areas of African American and Black Studies” protested the changes made during this year to the new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies.  Here is some of what these academics wrote:

“The College Board has now acknowledged that the Florida Department of Education… sought to influence the course not because of scholarly concerns or pedagogical standards but because that body was acting as a ‘political apparatus.’ The College Board’s admission that it removed the mention of concepts like ‘systemic marginalization’ and ‘intersectionality’ because they had become ‘politicized’ only serves to reward that same political apparatus… African American Studies is the study of the persistence of anti-Blackness and the connections between historical and contemporary efforts to resist structural racism… Finally, the censorship of foundational content was not limited to course concepts, themes and scholars alone. Course goals and learning outcomes were also revised to suggest that the course was not intended for students to assess ‘real world problems,’ ‘systemic marginalization,’ or to evaluate the ‘past, present, and future implications’ of major social movements…”

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Will Americans Want a 2024 Presidential Candidate Who Brazenly Subverts His State’s College Curricula and Politicizes Education?

Strategies to politicize public education are likely the symptom of a backlash against historical developments in a culture’s understanding of itself and/or an era of political divisiveness when one side wants to impose its particular view of a society and that society’s history and its cultural norms on everybody else.

We watched Glenn Youngkin storm through the Virginia governor’s race a couple of years ago with the support of middle class, white suburban mothers—funded by ideologues and supplied with materials from the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute—advocating to ban anything resembling a multicultural curriculum, which they branded as critical race theory.  Across the states, we are watching the same political thrust in the mass of culture war bills being debated in the state legislatures—anti-woke bills, “Don’t say gay bills,” bills that say teachers groom children, and all the attacks on what is being called critical race theory.

There are two ways politicians promoting this sort of thing are proceeding. The first is to pass laws banning the teaching or mentioning of certain subjects; the other is to change the people who oversee the agencies or boards that control what is going on at school. Ohio’s legislature has—so far unsuccessfully—tried both methods of political control of education.  Besides introducing a mass of bills to ban the teaching of divisive subjects, the far-right Republican legislature has been trying to manipulate the makeup of the state board of education—getting some appointed members fired for their positions on culture war issues and even trying to subsume the important functions of the independent state board, whose majority is still independently elected by the people, under a new state department controlled by the governor.

By passing and imposing several elements of this kind of agenda, one American politician today has taken political manipulation of education to a new level (see here, and here) by experimenting with both strategies: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

When, last February, Florida’s legislature was considering DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act,” which later passed and was signed into law by DeSantis, the Washington Post’s Tim Craig and Lori Rozsa profiled a Miami Beach high school speech and debate teacher:

“The school system in Florida’s most populous county includes students whose families moved here from 160 nations. Its expansive cultural mix is represented in the district’s curriculum, which includes not only American history, but also the stories of violent government upheavals, such as the revolution of enslaved people who founded Haiti, and the more recent political trauma of protestors who fled or perished in Castro’s Cuba. But as Florida lawmakers consider legislation to police what students are taught, Miami Beach Senior High School teacher Russell Rywell wonders if he will still be able to discuss how some of his students’ ancestors arrived in the United States. ‘How do you teach slavery? The slave trade? The Holocaust?’ asked Rywell… who has taught in Miami-Dade County’s public schools for 11 years. ‘How do you teach these issues without talking about the participants and the roles they played?'”

Governor DeSantis’s latest effort to politicize public education is at Florida’s state colleges and universities, not at the K-12 level, but it is perhaps the most outrageously symbolic of the whole series of attacks across the states on independent public schooling. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune‘s Zac Anderson reports that last Friday, “Gov. Ron DeSantis began the process… of transforming Sarasota’s New College of Florida into a more conservative institution, appointing six new board members, including conservative activist Christopher Rufo, a dean at conservative Hillsdale College and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank… The shakeup of the 13-member board is certain to create major tensions at New College, an institution that started as a progressive private school before becoming the state’s liberal arts honors college. The small school’s student body and faculty have a reputation for leaning left politically. Turning New College into a Florida version of Hillsdale would amount to flipping it upside down, a wholesale reinvention akin to a hostile takeover, and one that many current students and faculty are likely to resist.”

Anderson continues: “DeSantis aides blasted the school Friday and said an overhaul is needed. ‘Unfortunately, like so many colleges and universities in America, this institution has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning,’ said DeSantis’ communications Director Taryn Fenske.”

In case you have forgotten about Christopher Rufo, the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss provides a short review: “Rufo is a Republican activist who in 2020 caught Trump’s eye with an appearance on Fox News in which Rufo declared that critical race theory had ‘pervaded every institution in the federal government.'” She reminds readers that in 2021, the Washington Post‘s Laura Meckler and Josh Dawsey profiled Rufo as a documentary film maker explaining how to reframe and redefine the concept of “critical race theory,” previously known as a theoretical concept taught in law schools as part of the study of the history of structural racism in America.

Meckler and Dawsey quoted Rufo: “We have successfully frozen their brand—‘critical race theory’—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category… The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

Later in 2021, we learned from the National Education Policy Center that Christopher Rufo was not only a documentary film maker, but also a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. Now from Zac Anderson’s report we discover that Rufo has also become a dean at Hillsdale College and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.

Anderson tells us more about these institutions and what they illuminate about Gov. DeSantis’s goals for politicizing Florida’s public colleges and universities: “Joining Rufo on the New College board is Matthew Spalding, a professor of constitutional government at Hillsdale College and dean of the college’s graduate school of government in Washington, D.C. Spalding was vice president of American studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation.”

Anderson continues: “Hillsdale is a small Christian college in Michigan that has been active in conservative education politics. DeSantis spoke at Hillsdale’s National Leadership Seminar last year and has tapped the school to help reshape Florida’s education system. Charles Kesler, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute is joining the New College board… ‘Claremont scholars have collaborated with Ron DeSantis and helped shape the views of Clarence Thomas, Tom Cotton and the conservative activist Christopher Rufo’… the New York Times wrote last year. Trump lawyer John Eastman (is) another senior fellow at the Claremont Institute….”

In last week’s column, Valerie Strauss reminds readers that Hillsdale College’s President Larry Arnn, “was in the news recently when he said that teachers ‘are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country’ and that ‘anyone’ can teach. He headed Trump’s 1776 Commission….”

According to Anderson, Christopher Rufo has already begun promoting Governor DeSantis’s plan to politicize higher education in Florida: “‘Gov. DeSantis is going to lay siege to university ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ programs,’ Rufo wrote.  Among Rufo’s goals for New College…: Restructuring the administration, developing ‘a new core curriculum,’ eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion policies and restructuring academic departments.”

On Tuesday, NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg quoted Rufo about his plans as a New College trustee: “Later this month, Rufo said he’ll travel to New College with a ‘landing team’ of board members, lawyers, consultants and political allies. ‘We’re going to be conducting a top-down restructuring,’ he said, with plans to ‘design a new core curriculum from scratch’ and ‘encode it in a new academic master plan.'” What DeSantis and Rufo seem to be planning is a frontal attack on a principle that has been understood as the foundation of higher education across the United States: academic freedom.

As Governor Ron DeSantis becomes better known as a potential candidate for President in 2024—in a nation where polls show that citizens prize their public schools—will DeSantis’s agenda for public K-12 education and for public universities threaten his political viability?

In the Midst of Lame-Duck Culture War Attacks and Fighting about Vouchers, Here Are Some Core Principles to Remember

On Tuesday, this blog considered the implications of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s denigration of public school teachers, disdain for public schools, and exploitation of racist and homophobic attacks on the public school curriculum as their strategy for building far-right 2024 Presidential campaigns.  And right now, across many of the 50 statehouses, we are watching privatizers debate laws to expand vouchers at the expense of their state’s public school budgets and bills to threaten teachers who lead thoughtful and honest discussions of American history.

Watching the fraught educational culture wars and the current legislative battles, I thought about the following post I published in May of 2017, following the death of political philosopher, Benjamin Barber, a profound writer about public education.  Benjamin Barber believed a universal system of public schools is the best way to serve the needs of all children and protect their rights.

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Over the years, Benjamin Barber’s writing spoke poignantly to the civic principles that have defined our society’s commitment to public education. In today’s American ethos—defined by individualism, competition, and greed (along with the racism and homophobia that surrounds us in 2022)—Barber’s thinking calls us back to the principles by which our society defined the purpose of public education. Here are short excerpts from Barber’s own writing.

Some of the short essays published in Barber’s 1998 collection, A Passion for Democracy: American Essays, remain remarkably timely all these years later.

“Although a fifth to a quarter of all children under six and more than half of minority children live in poverty, everything from school lunch to after-school programs is being slashed at the federal and state levels… There is nothing sadder than a country that turns its back on its children, for in doing so it turns away from its own future.” (“Education for Democracy,” in A Passion for Democracy: American Essays, p. 225)

“In many municipalities, schools have become the sole surviving public institutions and consequently have been burdened with responsibilities far beyond traditional schooling. Schools are now medical clinics, counseling centers, vocational training institutes, police/security outposts, drug rehabilitation clinics, special education centers, and city shelters… Among the costs of public schools that are most burdensome are those that go for special education, discipline, and special services to children who would simply be expelled from (or never admitted into) private and parochial schools or would be turned over to the appropriate social service agencies (which themselves are no longer funded in many cities.)  It is the glory and the burden of public schools that they cater to all of our children, whether delinquent or obedient, drug damaged or clean, brilliant or handicapped, privileged or scarred.  That is what makes  them public schools.” (“Education for Democracy,” in A Passion for Democracy: American Essays, pp. 226-227)

“America is not a private club defined by one group’s historical hegemony.  Consequently, multicultural education is not discretionary; it defines demographic and pedagogical necessity. If we want youngsters from Los Angeles whose families speak more than 160 languages to be ‘Americans,’ we must first acknowledge their diversity and honor their distinctiveness. English will thrive as the first language in America only when those for whom it is a second language feel safe enough in their own language and culture to venture into and participate in the dominant culture. For what we share in common is not some singular ethnic or religious or racial unity but precisely our respect for our differences: that is the secret to our strength as a nation, and is the key to democratic education.” (“Education for Democracy,” in A Passion for Democracy: American Essays, p. 231)

Barber’s  2007 warning, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, explains precisely what is dangerous about the thinking of school privatizers…  who dismiss as harmless a more-than twenty year, bipartisan romance with charter schools (and today’s Republican fixation on expanding vouchers).

“It is the peculiar toxicity of privatization ideology that it rationalizes corrosive private choosing as a surrogate for the public good. It enthuses about consumers as the new citizens who can do more with their dollars and euros and yen than they ever did with their votes. It associates the privileged market sector with liberty as private choice while it condemns democratic government as coercive.” (Consumed, p. 143)

“We are seduced into thinking that the right to choose from a menu is the essence of liberty, but with respect to relevant outcomes the real power, and hence the real freedom, is in the determination of what is on the menu. The powerful are those who set the agenda, not those who choose from the alternatives it offers. We select menu items privately, but we can assure meaningful menu choices only through public decision-making.” (Consumed, p. 139)

“Through vouchers we are able as individuals, through private choosing, to shape institutions and policies that are useful to our own interests but corrupting to the public goods that give private choosing its meaning.  I want a school system where my kid gets the very best; you want a school system where your kid is not slowed down by those less gifted or less adequately prepared; she wants a school system where children whose ‘disadvantaged backgrounds’ (often kids of color) won’t stand in the way of her daughter’s learning; he (a person of color) wants a school system where he has the maximum choice to move his kid out of ‘failing schools’ and into successful ones.  What do we get?  The incomplete satisfaction of those private wants through a fragmented system in which individuals secede from the public realm, undermining the public system to which we can subscribe in common. Of course no one really wants a country defined by deep educational injustice and the surrender of a public and civic pedagogy whose absence will ultimately impact even our own private choices… Yet aggregating our private choices as educational consumers in fact yields an inegalitarian and highly segmented society in which the least advantaged are further disadvantaged as the wealthy retreat ever further from the public sector.  As citizens, we would never consciously select such an outcome, but in practice what is good for ‘me,’ the educational consumer, turns out to be a disaster for ‘us’ as citizens and civic educators—and thus for me the denizen of an American commons (or what’s left of it).” (Consumed, p. 132)

Barber’s 1992 book about education, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America, feels dated, with much of it addressing the culture wars raging a quarter century ago. What’s timely today in this book is Barber’s challenge to what has become a dominant assumption among many parents that education is a zero sum game. Today, very often, parents have been taught to believe that education is a competition—a race to the top for those who can run fastest.  School choice—driven by an ethos of individualism—encourages parents to fear that, “If your kid wins, mine will lose.” Barber confronts and contradicts that assumption even in his book’s title: everyone can be part of an aristocracy of the educated:

“This book admits no dichotomy between democracy and excellence, for the true democratic premise encompasses excellence: the acquired virtues and skills necessary to living freely, living democratically, and living well. It assumes that every human being, given half a chance, is capable of the self-government that is his or her natural right, and thus capable of acquiring the judgment, foresight, and knowledge that self-government demands. Not everyone can master string physics or string quartets, but everyone can master the conduct of his or her own life. Everyone can become a free and self-governing adult… Education need not begin with equally adept students, because education is itself the equalizer. Equality is achieved not by handicapping the swiftest, but by assuring the less advantaged a comparable opportunity.  ‘Comparable’ here does not mean identical… Schooling is what allows math washouts to appreciate the contributions of math whizzes—and may one day help persuade them to allocate tax revenues for basic scientific research… The fundamental assumption of democratic life is not that we are all automatically capable of living both freely and responsibly, but that we are all potentially susceptible to education for freedom and responsibility. Democracy is less the enabler of education than education is the enabler of democracy.” (An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 13-14)

Barber articulates abstract principles, ideals we should aim for. I realized how important it is to think about these principles when— after Hurricane Katrina led to the “shock doctrine” takeover and privatization of New Orleans’ public schools and the mass firing of all the teachers—I was sitting at an important conference. As a keynoter described the hurricane as an opportunity to “reform” the public schools, a woman in the audience leapt to her feet and shouted out: “They stole our public schools and they stole our democracy all while we were out of town!”

The New Orleans mother understood exactly what Benjamin Barber explains here: “Privatization is a kind of reverse social contract: it dissolves the bonds that tie us together into free communities and democratic republics. It puts us back in the state of nature where we possess a natural right to get whatever we can on our own, but at the same time lose any real ability to secure that to which we have a right. Private choices rest on individual power… personal skills… and personal luck.  Public choices rest on civic rights and common responsibilities, and presume equal rights for all. Public liberty is what the power of common endeavor establishes, and hence presupposes that we have constituted ourselves as public citizens by opting into the social contract. With privatization, we are seduced back into the state of nature by the lure of private liberty and particular interest; but what we experience in the end is an environment in which the strong dominate the weak… the very dilemma which the original social contract was intended to address.” (Consumed, pp. 143-144)

Republican Presidential Hopefuls Compete with Each Other to Trash Public School Teachers

As the race to be the Republican Party’s nominee for U.S. President in 2024 heats up, it’s already become ugly.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been ginning up his 2024 Presidential campaign with a scurrilous attack on none other than Randi Weingarten and America’s public school teachers. Two weeks ago, Pompeo announced: “I get asked, ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’ The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teacher’s unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing.”

Pompeo doesn’t seem to have noticed what happened in Tennessee with the Hillsdale College plan to open 50 charter schools across the state.  A sizeable backlash ensued after Hillsdale’s President Larry Arnn was caught on a hidden-camera video telling an audience that anybody can be a teacher and that public school teachers are “educated in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” After Arnn attacked teachers, a number of school districts across Tennessee quickly terminated negotiations for starting up any Hillsdale charter schools.

Last week, in a NY Post opinion piece, Pompeo clarified his shameless, ad hominum attack on America’s more than 3 million public school teachers by presenting his own culture war spin on the public schools’ failure to indoctrinate our children with a curriculum of American exceptionalism combined with the promotion of educational competition via school privatization: “Critical race theory and the 1619 Project derive from Marxist precepts; they do not reflect the greatness and the power of the American experiment… America’s founding was a watershed in world history. Our nation is exceptional. China, Russia and Iran destroy human initiative; America allows it to flourish…  Public schools must be required to compete for students with charter, private, and religious schools, in addition to homeschooling, for competition improves performance.”

Ah — Pompeo’s attack on teachers is merely his spectacularly ugly take on the platform another prospective 2024 Presidential candidate—Ron DeSantis—has already been implementing. Most public education policy is established under the 50 state constitutions, and Ron DeSantis, as Governor of Florida, is better positioned than a former Secretary of State to have already put in place a program that undermines his state’s public schools. After he was re-elected on November 8, DeSantis bragged: “Florida is “where woke goes to die.”  Here are a few things Ron DeSantis has accomplished:

• Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” and Parents’ Bill of Rights Bill — On July 1, the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss reported: “Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law, popularly known by critics as the ‘don’t say gay’ bill, went into effect on Friday, restricting what teachers can say about gender and sexual orientation… The law, signed March 28 by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), is the first of its kind in the country… The law also legally empowers parents to sue school districts as a way to advance their ‘parental rights.’”
• A Book Ban — Salon‘s Kathryn Joyce reported: “This March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a policy… that bans schools from using any books that are ‘pornographic’ or age ‘inappropriate,’ and allows parents broad access to review and challenge all books and materials used for instruction or in school libraries….”
• Florida State Public School Funding Dollars Flooding Out of Public Schools into Florida’s Huge and Growing Voucher Programs — In a collaborative report released in September, the national Education Law Center and the Florida Policy Center document that over a billion dollars is currently flowing out of Florida’s public school funding budget into vouchers.  And even more shocking, when students take a voucher the state sucks money right out of the already established school district budget: “School districts have no control over the number of students who apply for vouchers, which makes budgeting difficult.”

Now weeks after the November election, another of DeSantis’s strategies is falling into place.  Some of the conservative school board candidates Governor DeSantis endorsed have been making deep changes in the school districts for which they are responsible. Last week, Politico‘s Andrew Atterbury reported: “Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis put his weight behind dozens of conservative school board candidates across Florida during the midterms. Now they’re in office—and are purging some educational leaders who enforced Covid-19 mandates.  New board members in two GOP-leaning counties essentially sacked their school superintendents over the span of one week… And while not tied to the 2022 election, the school board in Broward County earlier this month fired its superintendent through an effort led by five members appointed by DeSantis. All combined, school boards with ties to DeSantis pushed out three superintendents in November alone….”

The Washington Post’s Laura Meckler adds: “School board races in Florida are nominally nonpartisan, but DeSantis jumped into the fray and endorsed 30 candidates whom he said would carry conservative values into local districts. Moms for Liberty, a conservative parent group with similar goals, made an overlapping set of endorsements as well. In response, Florida Democrats and teachers unions endorsed some candidates on the other side, turning school board races in some communities into de facto partisan political contests.  DeSantis’s picks ran on the mantle of parents’ rights, which typically translates to fewer accommodations for transgender students, less conversation about race and racism in the classroom and heightened scrutiny of books with sexual or other controversial themes.”

Politicians pandering to the hard right by blaming schoolteachers for America’s challenges are the same Republicans who appeal to racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, and homophobia.

In the NY Post last Friday, Randi Weingarten responded to Mike Pompeo’s attack on America’s teachers: “It’s tough to stand out in the GOP presidential scrum, but my 1.7 million members and I had a good eye roll last week when Mike Pompeo decided that calling me ‘the most dangerous person in the world’ was his surest path to the White House… His spite might be childish and petty, but what’s truly outrageous (is)… calling what educators do ‘filth’ and ‘propaganda.’  Our teachers give their all for their students, showing up every day for their kids, partnering with parents and helping the next generation fulfill their dreams… We agree with Pompeo that literacy is crucial—that’s why this year alone we (the American Federation of Teachers) have given out 1 million books to promote the joy of reading, instead of banning them, as his MAGA pals want to do. And in McDowell County, W. Va., one of the poorest counties in the nation, we launched a public-private partnership that has boosted high-school graduation rates, raised academic proficiency and helped stem the teacher shortage by building houses for teachers… If (Pompeo) wants to engage in a real discussion about how best to strengthen public education or the importance of treating educators with respect, I invite him to join me in a visit to one of America’s 100,000 public schools to learn a thing or two.”

Mike Pompeo might learn a lot by visiting the public schools he disdains. The late Mike Rose, a beloved educator and education writer, published his very best book, Possible Lives, about what he learned by visiting public school classrooms across the United States. Toward the end of that wonderful book, Rose writes: “The teachers we spent time with were knowledgeable. They knew subject matter or languages or technologies, which they acquired in a variety of ways: from formal schooling to curriculum-development projects to individual practice and study. In most cases, this acquisition of knowledge was ongoing, developing; they were still learning and their pursuits were a source of excitement and renewal…  As one teaches, one’s knowledge plays out in social space, and this is one of the things that makes teaching such a complex activity… The teachers we observed operate with a knowledge of individual students’ lives, of local history and economy, and of social-cultural traditions and practices… At heart, the teachers in Possible Lives were able to affirm in a deep and comprehensive way the capability of the students in their classrooms… Such affirmation of intellectual and civic potential, particularly within populations that have been historically devalued in our society, gives to these teachers’ work a dimension of advocacy, a moral and political purpose.”  (Possible Lives, pp. 418-423

Watch Out for Ron DeSantis

The political commentators focus on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis more and more as a potential Republican presidential nominee in 2024—the best alternative, they say, to the other guy.  But never once have I heard the pundits who dominate TV news explore DeSantis’ record on public education.  I guess it will be up to us—parents, teachers, and concerned citizens—to set the record straight.  Here is a summary of the facts we should all have at the ready. (And just to be clear, this post is not an endorsement of Trump as the 2024 Republican candidate.)

Top Education Rating from the Heritage Foundation — Last month, the far-right Heritage Foundation ranked Florida, the state led by Governor Ron DeSantis, as the overall winner on its 2022 Education Freedom Report Card.  If your state gets the top prize in education from the American Legislative Exchange Council or the Heritage Foundation, it does not mean that you have an adequately and equitably funded state system of public schools, a system which requires careful credentialing of teachers.

Here is how the Heritage Foundation describes its 2022 winner: “The Sunshine State embraces education freedom across the board. Florida does exceptionally well in allowing parents to choose among private, charter, and district schools, is home to a strong Education Savings Account (voucher) program…. Among other protections, state lawmakers set a high standard for academic transparency, and reject critical race theory’s pernicious ideas.”  “To assess the regulatory freedom of a given state, we consider barriers to teaching, such as whether a state encourages alternative teacher certification and the number of teachers who have benefited, or whether a state largely requires aspiring teachers to attend university-based colleges of education….”

Writing for Salon, Katheryn Joyce summarizes the policies prioritized by the Heritage Foundation’s report card as “key action items for conservative education reformers, from the promotion of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), as a preferred pathway to universal school vouchers, to alternative teacher credentialing, to the expansion of the Anti-CRT movement which now encompasses anything related to ‘diversity, equity and inclusion.'”

Parent Organizing for Ron DeSantis himself along with His Far Right Causes — Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, recently published Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, to follow supposedly untraceable money invested by those who want to undermine public education. Cunningham’s primary focus has been his home state, but last week he tracked the money behind Moms for Liberty, the Florida-spawned group of organized parents known for loudly disrupting local school board meetings: “The group, which claims to be about ‘parent rights,’ has ties to the January 6 insurrection and is expected to provide ‘foot soldiers’ for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Moms for Liberty (M4L) claims the organization was started by moms. But it is hard to believe that three mothers in Florida could start up a grassroots group on January 1, 2021, and then, within a matter of weeks and months, wind up on Rush Limbaugh,Tucker Carlson’s show, Glenn Beck, and Fox News. However, there is a shadowy network of money and influence in right-wing political circles that could arrange that easily. Among M4L’s financial supporters and profile boosters are some of the most influential organizations, media operations, and wealthy donors in the vast theater of the right-wing propaganda machine.”

Cunningham traces funding for Moms for Liberty to the Council for National Policy, which Cunningham describes as “combining vast sums of conservative money, Christian nationalists and their communications networks, and activist groups like the National Rifle Association into a powerful organization.” Moms for Liberty also received a big donation from Betsy DeVos’s mother, Elsa Prince Broekhuizen. Another funder of M4L is the Leadership Institute, which was, “the largest donor for M4L’s 2022 national summit and the sole known $50,000 presenting sponsor.”  “The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America were (also) sponsors of M4L’s national summit.”

For NBC News, Tyler Kingkade describes Moms for Liberty and its July, 2022, first national summit: “The organization’s rapid ascension—its leaders say it has nearly 100,000 members across 195 chapters in 37 states—has been driven by the appeal of its core issues among conservatives, including battling mask mandates in schools, banning library books that address sexuality and gender identity, and curtailing lessons on racial inequity and discrimination….” At its Tampa summit in July, “Attendees… heard speeches from prominent Florida Republicans, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely considered a presidential candidate in waiting, as well as Sen. Rick Scott, the National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, who said Moms for Liberty-backed candidates are going to help the GOP win governor races and control the Senate in the midterm elections…”  Cunningham adds some of the event’s other speakers: Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, and Trump’s former Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.

Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” and Parents’ Bill of Rights Bill — On July 1, the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss reported: “Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law, popularly known by critics as the ‘don’t say gay’ bill, went into effect on Friday, restricting what teachers can say about gender and sexual orientation… The law, signed March 28 by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), is the first of its kind in the country… The law also legally empowers parents to sue school districts as a way to advance their ‘parental rights.’ It is part of a push by DeSantis to restrict what teachers can say—an effort that includes topics in race, racism, and U.S. history.”

The NY Times‘ Dana Goldstein summarizes the bill: “Instruction on gender and sexuality would be constrained in all grades… Schools would be required to notify parents when children receive mental, emotional or physical health services unless educators believe there is a risk of ‘abuse, abandonment, or neglect.’…Parents would have the right to opt their children out of counseling and health services… Parents could sue schools for violating the vaguely written bill, and districts would have to cover the costs… Florida would rewrite school counseling standards.”

Strauss responds to the Florida bill, which has become a model for legislation proposed in other states, by quoting a statement from the White House: “This is not an issue of parents’ rights. This is discrimination, plain and simple. It’s part of a disturbing and dangerous nationwide trend of right-wing politicians cynically targeting LGBTQI+ students, educators, and individuals to score political points. It encourages bullying and threatens students’ mental health, physical safety, and well-being. It censors dedicated teachers and educators who want to do the right thing and support their students.”

A Book Ban — Salon‘s Kathryn Joyce recently exposed another of Governor Ron DeSantis’s public education initiatives: “This March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a policy… that bans schools from using any books that are ‘pornographic’ or age ‘inappropriate,’ and allows parents broad access to review and challenge all books and materials used for instruction or in school libraries… In combination with other recent laws restricting public schools from discussing LGBTQ issues or racism—including Florida’s 2022 ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law… and ‘Stop WOKE Act’… and its 2021 ban on teaching ‘Critical Race Theory’—this has led some school districts to advise teachers to box up their classroom libraries until each book is vetted. Others have instructed teachers to stop buying or accepting donated books for their classrooms until at least January, to give the district time to hire mandatory new staff to serve as ‘media specialists’ who review each title.”

Florida State Public School Funding Dollars Flooding Out of Public Schools into Florida’s Huge and Growing Voucher Programs — In a collaborative report released in September, the national Education Law Center and the Florida Policy Center document that over a billion dollars is currently flowing out of Florida’s public school funding budget into vouchers.  And even more shocking, when students take a voucher the state sucks money right out of the already established school district budget: “School districts have no control over the number of students who apply for vouchers, which makes budgeting difficult. The expansion of voucher eligibility allows higher income families to qualify and removes the requirement for students to have previously attended public schools.”

Here is what has happened since Ron DeSantis was elected Florida’s governor in November of 2018: “Since 2019, the flow of public funds to private education dramatically increased after the State Legislature enacted the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) program. While voucher programs are often funded as line-item appropriations in the state budget or through state tax credits, the FES voucher is funded from the Florida Education Finance Program state allocations that would otherwise be directed to the student’s resident public school district.” “In 2022-23, an estimated $1.3 billion in funding will be redirected from public school districts to private education, representing 10% of the state K-12 education funds allocated through the Florida Education Finance Program, the state’s school funding formula.  This sum is in addition to a potential $1.1 billion taken from general revenue that would otherwise be used to support state services, including education, as a result of tax credits claimed by businesses that donate to voucher programs.”

Consider all these facts when you hear the political commentators describe Ron DeSantis as the best non-Trump.  The conditions of public schools across the fifty states—schools which serve roughly 50 million of our children and adolescents—hardly ever seem to be part of the national political conversation these days.  But far-right advocates and politicians, many of them operating quietly in the statehouses that set public school policy, are working hard to undermine our nation’s largest and one of its most important civic institutions.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a political leader actively working to undermine the institution of public schools and to threaten the work of school teachers. Beware!