Could This Be Gadfly’s End? Top 12 Articles From 2023 Read By Fewer Than Ever

December 22, 2023 stevenmsinger academic freedom, Accountability, Budget, Censorship, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, history, Labor, Learning, McKeesport Area School District, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philosophy, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teach for America, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology, Uncategorized 2023, After School Satan Club, Asian-Americans, blog, bloggers, charter schools, Commonwealth Charter Academy, Cyber Charter Schools, education, Education Bloggers Network, end of the year, library, MAP test, Politics, Propel Charter Schools, teacher salary, teachers, woke

Thank you, loyal readers, but this may be the end of Gadfly on the Wall.

Readership has fallen off to such a degree that I’m just not sure it’s worth continuing anymore.

That combined with increasing difficulties in my own life have made me truly question whether I should (or can) go on with it.

Don’t get me wrong. I will truly cherish every moment writing these articles, fighting for what I (still) think needs to happen in public education so that our children can be fairly treated and succeed.

There is so much I think most people don’t know about what happens in our schools and what could be done to make them better for children, families and the people who work there.

But after 9 years of pounding my head against the wall – well, it seems like the wall is winning.

This blog used to be read by at least half a million people each year. But social media – the prime distributor of this material – is not what it was a decade ago. In 2021, I had 222,414 hits. Last year it was 124,984. This year it was 73,121.

And much of those were for articles I’d written in years past. The highest three articles this year were not written in 2023. They were: The MAP Test – Selling Schools Unnecessary Junk at Student Expense ( 2,344) from Aug. 2022, When Good Students Get Bad Standardized Test Scores (1,775) from Oct. 2022, and Lesson Plans Are a Complete Waste of Time (1,544) from Sept. 2021.

Why keep putting out new content? It often feels like I’m saying the same thing over and over anyway – and not really being heard except by the same few people.

So I’m going to pause, take a moment and really think about things.

Heck! I might find out that I simply can’t quit because I’ve got too much to say. Then again, I may only write when something really important comes up that I absolutely have to let loose on.

Or this could be it.

I don’t know.

In any case, thank you so much for nearly 10 years of readership. I assume most people seeing this would have been here for the long haul.

It has been an amazing experience. I’m not sure what comes next, but for now I leave you with some outstanding moments from 2023.

All the best in the future!

-Steven Singer

The Gadfly on the Wall

12) Standardized Tests Hurt Asian-American Students, Too, Though Many Get High Scores

Published: March 27

Views: 243

Description: Asian-Americans – taken as a whole – score better on standardized tests than white Americans. But they are just as much victimized by testing as any other minority. The only difference is their success is held up as an excuse for upholding this deeply inequitable practice. It obscures that all Asians are not the same, certain types do not score as highly yet all are held to unfair expectations.

Fun Fact: This is a rarely explored or reported on aspect of the standardized testing phenomenon. I’m proud to have written on it despite its low readership.

11) Fact Checking Propel Charter Schools – Do They Live Up to Their Own Hype?

Published: Jan. 20

Views: 572

Description: The Propel Charter School network of 13 schools based in Pittsburgh, Pa, has advertisements everywhere proclaiming its virtues. However, this is just advertising. From test scores to safety to class size to teacher qualifications and many other factors, the charter chain comes up short again and again. Compared with authentic public schools in the same neighborhoods where these schools are located, Propel compares rather badly.

Fun Fact: I think this is incredibly important in the western Pennsylvania region. This information should be shared far and wide. It should at very least spark media investigations comparing Propel and authentic public schools so parents could make informed choices about where to send their children. But we never see that because Propel is a frequent advertiser. If the media provided this information – and didn’t just uncritically repeat propaganda – the media conglomerates would lose valuable advertising revenue. I am proud I could provide this public service.

10) Stay Woke, Public School Teachers

Published: March 12

Views: 588

Description: Being “woke” just means being alert to racial prejudice and discrimination – just knowing that these things exist and trying to recognize them when present. The way I see it, that’s well under a teacher’s job description. After all, who else will teach the true history that for more than 400 years in excess of 15 million men, women and children were the victims of the transatlantic slave trade? Who will teach the true history of the fight against human bondage and the struggle for equal rights? Who will teach about women’s fight for suffrage, equal pay, and reproductive freedom? Who will teach about the struggle of the individual to affirm their own gender identity and sexual expression? It’s up to us.

Fun Fact: Republicans are so anti-teacher, they’ve made the acquisition of knowledge part of the culture war and turned teachers into the enemy. This was just my way of pushing back a little.

9) Where Have School Libraries Gone?

Published: Aug. 25

Views: 681

Description: McKeesport Area School District – where I graduated and my daughter still attends classes – closed its high school public library for good. They gave away the books and turned it into a large group instruction room. And this kind of thing is happening all across the country. This is a problem because every book is not available on-line. In fact, the number and variety of books available digitally is much smaller than most public or school libraries typically have in their collections – if you’re not going to pay an additional fee. I can read most of the classics of world literature on the Internet, but anything that isn’t in the public domain is going to require me to pony up some dough. And the same goes for most respected resources.

Fun Fact: This was a truly depressing discovery but even more so was the response. Many people couldn’t grasp why libraries are even necessary today. Libraries used to be something society provided to every citizen just as a matter of course. Now our expectations are so low that we’ve nearly given up on this essential resource.

8) After School Satan Clubs Are Teaching Public School Districts an Important Lesson in Free Speech

Published: May 17

Views: 691

Description: Thousands of districts in the US allow religious organizations and clubs to operate on public school property, especially after classes are over. So The Satanic Temple goes around proposing After-School Satan Clubs at the same districts – and all Hell breaks loose.

Fun Fact: You want to let religion in the school house door, you have to let all of them in. You can’t pick and choose.

7) Congress May Raise Educators’ Minimum Salaries to Combat the Teacher Exodus

Published: Jan. 1

Views: 699

Description: A group of Congressional Democrats have proposed a national minimum salary for teachers. Rep. Frederica Wilson and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, (both former teachers) and six other members of the House have introduced The American Teacher Act establishing a minimum salary of $60,000 for all public school teachers working in the U.S. – the first legislation of its kind. The average starting salary of teachers nationwide was $41,770 in the 2020-21 school year, according to the National Education Association (which supports the bill).

Fun Fact: What a lovely thought! Still waiting on this to be approved. Any day now. Come on, Congress!

6) I am a Charter School Abolitionist, and You Should Be, Too

Published: March 22

Views: 701

Description: Charter schools have been around since 1992. Though it seems like they’re everywhere these days, only 45 states and the District of Columbia allow these schools and even then they enroll just 6% of the students in the country – roughly three million children. The five states that do not have charter school laws are Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Vermont. So after 32 years of trial and error, we’re left with a charter school system that does not get better academic results than authentic public schools (despite being given dramatic advantages in their charter agreements) and in many cases drastically fails by comparison. Not to mention all the fraud, malfeasance and ineptitude you get from removing regulations for any Tom, Dick or Harry who thinks he can open a school. Time to abolish these schools and end this failed experiment.

Fun Fact: This article really angered some folks. There are lots of people who hate the idea of charter schools in general but want to preserve anything that they think might give their own kids an advantage over others. Even if that is rarely the case! However, the gleam of the new has definitely worn off this concept and an increasing number of folks are open to limiting or ending this fiasco.

5) A Private Equity Firm, The Makers of the MAP Test, and an Ed Tech Publisher Join Forces

Published: Jan. 26

Views: 930

Description: A year after being gobbled up by private equity firm Veritas Capital, ed tech company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) is acquiring K-12 assessment giant Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA). Let me put that in perspective – a scandal-ridden investment firm that made billions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bought one of standardized testing’s big four and then added the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test to its arsenal. This almost certainly means the cost of state testing is going to increase since the providers of the tests are shrinking.

Fun Fact: This is the kind of story that will creep into our lives before we even realize what is happening. We’ll wonder why our districts and even entire states which rely heavily on the MAP test are buying as much HMH curriculum as possible. That way they can teach directly what is on their standardized tests. Bye, bye, tax dollars that could have been spent to educate kids!

4) Top 4 Things McKeesport Area School Directors Need to do to Extinguish the District Dumpster Fire

Published: Oct. 8

Views: 963

Description: My neighborhood district – McKeesport Area School District (MASD) – is going through tough times. School directors reneged on a teachers contract. Their business manager ran for the hills. And at a board meeting two school directors had their dirty laundry aired during public comments prompting one to call a White Oak Councilperson a homophobic slur. I had four suggestions to right the ship: (1) Pass a Code of Conduct for Board Members and Administrators, (2) Start Streaming Council Meetings Again, (3) Hire a New Reputable Business Manager, and (4) Pass a Teachers Contract with No Tax Increase.

Fun Fact: This article got a lot of notice in the neighborhood and some of my suggestions actually got done. The district hired a new business manager and will begin streaming new meetings. They’re also negotiating with teachers so fingers crossed.

3) Teach for America Promised to Fix the Teacher Exodus Before Anyone Even Noticed There Was One. Now It’s Choking on Its Own Failure

Published: Aug. 7

Views: 1,070

Description: Teach for America (TFA) was supposed to fix the teacher exodus by fast tracking non-education majors into the classroom where they would teach for a few years and then enter the private sector as “experts” to drive public policy. College graduates would take a five-week crash course in education and commit to at least two years in the classroom thereby filling any vacant teaching positions. Not only didn’t it work, it ended up making the situation worse. Now the organization created in 1990 is expecting its lowest enrollment in 15 years. TFA anticipates placing slightly less than 2,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall. I guess watering down what it means to be a teacher is even less popular than actually being an educator.

Fun Fact: People really hate TFA. The organization’s cred has gone down more than anything else in the education field – even more than charter schools. The fact that the emperor has no clothes here is painfully obvious.

2) Come Visit Your Wasted Tax Dollars at Commonwealth Charter Academy’s Waterfront Luxury Office Space

Published: Feb. 4

Views: 1,236

Description: If you go to the Waterfront in Homestead, PA, you’ll find the newest satellite office of Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA) – the biggest cyber charter school network in the entire state. It’s one of 51 locations statewide. Only 27 states allow CYBER charters like this – schools that teach mostly (or entirely) distance learning through the Internet. Nationwide, Pennsylvania and Ohio have the largest cyber charter enrollment. In 2020-21, the Keystone State enrolled 61,000 students in 14 cyber charters – and roughly 21,000 attend CCA! There’s an authentic public school in this neighborhood, too – Steel Valley School District – right up the hill. It’s not located in nearly as trendy a spot though. Moreover, its four buildings were constructed around the 1970s and are crumbling down in places. But the new cyber charter school building looks like a palace!

Fun Fact: I don’t think most people who go to the Waterfront understand what the CCA location really is. To them it’s just another school, kind of sleek and modern looking. This article was my attempt to tell them. Thankfully it proved relatively popular, though the CCA people absolutely had a conniption. They couldn’t believe someone was criticizing their profitable business venture. This story brought the most trolls of any this year.

1) McKeesport Teachers Without a Contract Because of Bad Business Manager or Bad Faith School Board?

Published: Aug. 16

Views: 1,409

Description: McKeesport Area School District (MASD) botched a new teachers contract. So the question is – does it have a terrible business manager or a regressive school board? School directors and the teachers had agreed to a new contract, but the board tabled it in June after concerns that the western Pennsylvania district didn’t have the money to pay for moderate raises. Then the board skipped the entire month of July without a meeting as if the livelihoods of hundreds of employees don’t count. By the time classes were set to begin in August, the board was no closer to solving the problem. Board members mostly blamed the business manager who eventually quit. The situation still has not been resolved.

Fun Fact: This article hit the neighborhood like a nuclear blast. Everyone seemed to be talking about it. Someone in the neighborhood literally called me a “local legend” for having written it. I’m just glad it focused people’s attentions on the facts of the matter. If anything gets me to blog again, it will be writing more about the local stories that are so important but no one else is talking about.

Gadfly’s Other Year End Round Ups

This wasn’t the first year I’ve done a countdown of the year’s greatest hits. I usually write one counting down my most popular articles and one listing articles that I thought deserved a second look. Here are all my end of the year articles since I began my blog in 2014:

2022:

Gadfly’s Most Outrageous Articles in 2021 That You May Have Missed or Been Too Polite to Share

Gadfly’s Top 10 Articles of 2021 – Shouts in the Dark

2020:

The Most Important Education Articles (By Me) That You Probably Missed in 2020

Outrunning the Pandemic – Racing Through Gadfly’s Top 10 Stories of 2020

2019:

Sixteen Gadfly Articles That Made Betsy DeVos Itch in 2019 

2018:

A Gadfly’s Dozen: Top 13 Education Articles of 2018 (By Me)

2017:

What’s the Buzz? A Crown of Gadflies! Top 10 Articles (by Me) in 2017

Hidden Gadfly – Top 5 Stories (By Me) You May Have Missed in 2017

2016

Worse Than Fake News – Ignored News. Top 5 Education Stories You May Have Missed in 2016

Goodbye, 2016, and Good Riddance – Top 10 Blog Post by Me From a Crappy Year

2015

Gadfly’s Choice – Top 5 Blogs (By Me) You May Have Missed from 2015

Who’s Your Favorite Gadfly? Top 10 Blog Posts (By Me) That Enlightened, Entertained and Enraged in 2015

2014

Off the Beaten Gadfly – the Best Education Blog Pieces You Never Read in 2014

School Directors Shouldn’t Double Down on PA’s Keystone Exam Circus

November 11, 2023 stevenmsinger academic freedom, Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Harrisburg, history, Keystone Exams, Learning, Local Control, McKeesport Area School District, NCLB, No Child Left Behind, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, portfolio-based assessments, Prejudice, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, Student Mobility, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Uncategorized annual testing, economics, education, Greed, Keystone Exams, Pennsylvania, Politics, standardization, standardized testing, Students, teachers, Test Prep, test-based accountability, testing

Ladies and Gentlemen, children of all ages, welcome to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Keystone Exam Circus!

Here you will see children of 14 to 18-years-old perform death defying stunts just in order to graduate!

They’ll jump through the flaming hoop of the Algebra I Exam!

They’ll hop through the spiked hoop of the Literature Exam!

And they’ll even bound through the nitroglycerine filled hoop of the Biology Exam!

All this just so they can qualify for a diploma they’ve already earned by passing 12 years or more of coursework!

Now isn’t that the greatest show on Earth!!!!!!?

Apparently, some school directors must think so. Because they’ve decided to force all the students in their districts into the center ring.

Because as stupid as the state law is – and it is very, very stupid – it doesn’t require all students to pass these tests to graduate. Kids don’t even have to take the tests if they don’t want.

If they so choose, they may skip one or more of these ridiculous assessments in favor of an alternative.

They can take a different test like the SAT, ACT, etc., achieve an industry-based competency certification, successfully complete a service-learning project, or finish an internship or cooperative education program, among other metrics.

Sure! It’s a glorified fetch quest full of unnecessary complications and anxiety, but it’s better than being forced to pass a cockamamie fill-in-the-bubble corporate boondoggle.

Unfortunately some school board members don’t see it that way.

It’s not that they want to remove this senseless hurdle from students who have already proven they’ve learned the prerequisite skills to graduate. They still want kids to go on a wild goose chase, but they can’t stomach the idea of kids picking their own goose.

To switch back to the metaphor with which I started this piece, they would rather students jump through the standardized testing hoop – the one made by Data Recognition Corp (DRC), the Minnesota corporation that writes the Keystone Exams and has been gorging on $533 million in Commonwealth tax dollars for the last decade. Not the hoop that pays the College Board or one that – God forbid – doesn’t make a huge corporation any richer.

Why?

It’s beyond me.

Maybe they think forcing students down the DRC path will help improve district academics.

Maybe they love fill-in-the-bubble tests.

Or maybe they just hate kids…

I don’t know.

But one thing is certain – the Keystone Exams are a costly mistake the state forces taxpayers to fund and kids to endure unnecessary gatekeeping and narrowed classroom curriculum.

The whole mess started when the federal government reauthorized its education law formerly called No Child Left Behind (NClB). That law required kids to take standardized tests in middle school and once in high school. When Congress changed the name to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), it allowed more flexibility in the high school test. It didn’t just have to be a standardized test. The state could pick from all kinds of options. Pennsylvania chose one of almost everything including new standardized tests – the Keystones!

But the state legislature couldn’t decide whether to make it a graduation requirement until just last year.

Students who graduated in May (2023) were the first required to pass these exams or qualify with an alternate assessment, and the data is still out on its full impact.

A report conducted by The Philadelphia Education Research Consortium estimated that only about one third of city students would meet graduation requirements by passing the Keystone Exams. Specifically, nearly 50 Philadelphia high schools had less than 25% of their students with Keystone proficiency rates sufficient to graduate. The report concluded that some additional percentage of students would graduate with alternate assessments but there was no way to estimate what percentage that would be. Would fewer graduate? The same? More? No one knows yet.

Given this uncertainty, it’s difficult to fathom why school board members would want to require tests that may stand in the way of students’ future success.

This is especially true in districts serving poorer families.

Kids in wealthier districts almost always do better on the Keystone Exams than those in poorer districts, according to a report by State Auditor General Eugene DePasquale and State Sen. Andy Dinniman.

In fact, the report notes that of the 100 state schools with the highest scores, only five were located in impoverished districts —where the average household income is below $50,000.

Why would any district – especially those serving students with lower socioeconomics – feed kids into such a system, especially when they don’t have to play that game?

“The Department of Education itself said they [the Keystone Exams] are not an accurate or adequate indicator of career or academic readiness,” Dinniman said. “…These tests have faced opposition from almost every educational organization that exists.”

He’s right.

A 2019 report conducted by the state Legislative Budget and Finance Committee found that state educators (both principals and classroom teachers) overwhelmingly disapprove of the state’s standardized tests. That includes the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests given in grades 3-8 and Keystone Exams given in high school. Educators think these tests are ineffective, expensive and harmful to district curriculum and students.

When it comes to the PSSAs, 76% of teachers and 67% of principals said the tests were bad assessments.

For the Keystone Exams, 60% of teachers and 45% of principals said the tests were ineffective indicators of student achievement.

Both principals and teachers said their curriculum had been narrowed to prepare students for PSSAs and Keystone Exams. Instead of going into more depth on regular classwork or learning new skills, the focus shifts to teaching to the tests.

Taking the tests also eats up valuable class time. Administering the assessments takes between 5.7 to 8 days for each kind of test – the PSSA and the Keystone Exams, according to principals.

In addition, the report details the cost of giving these tests. In fiscal year 2017-2018, the state Department of Education paid $42.17 million for these tests.

This is part of a national trend:

“Standardized tests and test preparation have subsequently become big business and that multibillion dollar business continued to grow since the enactment of NCLB and the subsequent enactment of ESSA. According to the Pew Center on the States, annual state spending on standardized tests increased from $423 million before the NCLB (enacted in 2002) to upwards of $1.1 billion in 2008 (to put this in perspective this reflects a 160 percent increase compared to a 19.22 percent increase in inflation during the same time period). A more recent study by the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brooking put the cost at upwards of $1.7 billion in 2011 related to state spending on standardized tests.”

In just one year (2019) the state paid DRC $17.6 million to administer and score the Keystone Exams, said DePasquale. Between 2015 and 2021, the state spent nearly $100 million on the exams. And if we add in the PSSA, the corporation has collected $533 million from the Commonwealth over the last decade, DePasquale said.

Why are some school board members so dead set on making sure we keep paying them?

Federal law requires some kind of accountability measure before graduation whether it be a standardized test or something else. Why can’t the state simply use classroom grades for this measure? These are the daily assessment of student learning. How does it help students by inserting a corporation to make more money off of taxpayers?

The whole process is a complicated, unnecessary circus with our kids in the role of trained monkeys spinning plates so big business can slurp up more of our money.

I hope school directors will begin to understand this and not give in to the standardized testing spectacle.

It’s time for someone to send the clowns back home.

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Top 4 Things McKeesport Area School Directors Need to do to Extinguish the District Dumpster Fire

October 8, 2023 stevenmsinger Accountability, Allegheny County, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, COVID-19, Credibility, Education, history, Labor, Learning, Local Control, McKeesport Area School District, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, School Funding, Schools, Students, Taxation, Teachers, Technology, Uncategorized, Unions charter schools, education, McKeesport, McKeesport Area School District, Pennsylvania, Politics, public schools, school board, teachers contract, Union Contract

It gives me no joy to write this, but McKeesport Area School District (MASD) is a raging dumpster fire.

School directors reneged on a teachers contract. Their business manager ran for the hills. And at the last board meeting two school directors had their dirty laundry aired during public comments prompting one to call a White Oak Councilperson a homophobic slur.

Our finances have been given over to an accounting firm paid for by Dick’s Sporting Goods. An $86 million district budget (2023-24) at the mercy of the place where you go to buy new sneakers and fishing tackle.

This is pretty low – even for schools as historically dysfunctional as McKeesport.

As a local reporter in Pennsylvania’s Mon-valley area in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I saw a lot of crazy things happen at local government meetings throughout the western corner of the state.

But McKeesport School Board meetings were legendary. The nepotism, incompetence, ignorance, glad-handing and focus on anything but education was something my colleagues and I would marvel at when we had time to compare notes.

Now the running of district schools threatens to grind to a halt by a prospective teachers strike! If we want to get things back into some semblance of order, I think we need to do a few things.

As a lifelong resident of the district, an alumni and father of a child who currently goes to school there – not to mention a public school teacher at a neighboring district with more than two decades in the classroom – I think school directors need to focus on these four things first.

They are:

4) Pass a Code of Conduct for Board Members and Administrators

I am sympathetic to School Board members Jim Brown and LaToya Wright. At the last board meeting several people trolled the pair with questions about their marriage. Since school board members have to live in the district, these folks wanted Wright removed if she were separated from her husband and had relocated outside of the district.

While it’s fair to require school directors to provide proof of residency, this kind of Jerry Springer style questioning is not appropriate for a public meeting. If I had to constantly answer questions like this while volunteering to help guide the community’s schools, I might also find it hard to keep my composure.

However, that does not excuse using slurs of any kind at a public meeting – not racial, religious, sexual or otherwise.

Brown has apologized on-line for his indiscretion and should do so again at the next school board meeting. But his actions highlight a glaring problem within our district.

We need a code of conduct for our school board members and administrators.

The previous Superintendent Dr. Mark Holtzman was frequently sarcastic, flippant and rude to members of the public who asked questions he did not like at board meetings – myself included. It has been pretty standard procedure for board members to ridicule each other, make threats and/or stifle public comments.

These are the people who run our schools. They make the decisions that impact all of us as taxpayers and citizens – decisions that impact those of us with family enrolled in the school even more.

They should have to abide by a certain minimum level of civility – especially that hate speech of any kind not be tolerated.

Given the circumstances, I do not think Brown should be removed from the board. However, he should be given the chance to publicly apologize at the next board meeting. If he does not, he should be censured by his fellow board members.

It should be entirely clear what kind of behavior would bring censure, removal and/or impeachment.

School directors often act like being on the board gives them the right to hand out jobs to unqualified relatives and acquaintances, to seek revenge for supposed wrongs done to family or friends, and an excuse to enrich themselves on the public dime.

This needs to stop.

We need to draw a line in the sand to show what behavior is appropriate not just as a model for our children who we are supposed to be serving here, but also so that despite our differences we can finally work together in the best interests of everyone in the community. That’s why these people are supposed to be there in the first place.

3) Start Streaming Council Meetings Again

During the Covid pandemic, MASD would routinely video and stream its school board meetings on-line. About a year ago, the school board voted to stop.

Why?

These are public meetings. We are a working class district. Most people don’t have the time to physically attend every meeting.

This isn’t 1973. It’s not even 2003. We have the technology to cheaply and easily tape and share the meetings. We should absolutely do so. There is no possible excuse not to comply.

My middle school students have the know how to do this – and could do it in better quality than the district used to provide.

In the past, the board was indifferently microphoned so it was incredibly difficult to make out what they were saying – especially if they didn’t want to be heard. The camera was so far away, you couldn’t see anything except a few blurs behind a table.

That showed indifference to the public. Not streaming the meetings at all shows downright hostility.

Board members are afraid of spectacles like that which happened at the last board meeting becoming a video part of the public record. With the relative lack of almost any reliable newspaper to cover the area, it is often the case that board meetings aren’t even reported in the local paper and if they are, it may be in the most rudimentary terms possible or behind a paywall.

The school board should absolutely reverse itself on this point and renew taping the meetings and release them on-line. They could even invite a high school video club to do the work and probably greatly increase the quality of the product. The board should be proud of what it’s doing – not cower in the shadows. If the results are embarrassing, the public has a right to see it. What better inducement for board members and administrators NOT to behave badly?

And if the board won’t do this, some enterprising members of the public should. The teachers union or others could easily do this. These are public meetings. We have every right to tape them and put them on-line.

And any district who wants any kind of control over that should provide it as a free service, itself.

2) Hire a New Reputable Business Manager

Business Manager Scott Domowicz left the district over controversy about the board’s rejection of the teachers contract (more on that below).

The board accepted Domowicz’s resignation at its September meeting, but it won’t go into effect until the beginning of November. The board passed a motion to advertise the open position.

Meanwhile, accounting firm Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG) is ensuring the district’s finances are in order.

The board voted 5-4 to allow Dicks Sporting Goods to pay for 50 hours of accounting services by the firm, one of the big four in the industry.

Personally, I don’t like our schools being beholden to the largest sporting goods retailer in the country even if they are based in nearby Coraopolis. Our district already is too focused on its athletics program to the detriment of academics. I may just be cynical, but I don’t believe in corporate philanthropy – only philanthrocapitalism. I wonder what Dicks is going to ask MASD to do to repay this debt or what backroom deals may have already been made along these lines.

The district needs to hire a new business manager ASAP – and this time it needs to be someone with experience and a good reputation.

Domowicz originally had been hired in late February 2022 at an annual salary of $100,000. He had been the business manager at Spectrum Charter School in Monroeville for about a year. Before that he was Senior Management Consultant for two decades at Great Lakes Management Consulting, a firm offering accounting and tax preparation services to customers and small business owners in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

Spectrum Charter School is much smaller than MASD. The privatized school employs 11-20 people and has $1 million to $5 million in annual revenue. MASD has roughly 3,000 students and 300 teachers with a proposed budget of $86 million next year.

The previous Business Manager Joan Wehner had more experience in the education field. She was assistant to the business manager at Penn-Trafford School District for 10 years before coming to McKeesport. She left the district to become business manager at Greensburg Salem School District.

It would be beneficial to get a replacement with a demonstrated track record in education – but it may be difficult to entice someone like that to come to a place as toxic as McKeesport. However, we need to do whatever we can to make it so.

1 ) Pass a Teachers Contract with No Tax Increase

School directors and the teachers had agreed to a tentative new contract in June, but the board tabled it after concerns that the district didn’t have the money to pay for moderate raises.

Then the board skipped the entire month of July without a meeting. But had no answers when they came back in August or September.

They just heaped blame on Domowicz, so he resigned.

Meanwhile, the teachers current contract expired at the end of August and the 266 teachers and professional education staff become so fed up, they voted unanimously to authorize a strike. This does not mean an immediately work stoppage, but it is the first step toward one.

The union has agreed to one more 30-day extension to contract negotiations. However, union President Gerald McGrew said that this is the final extension the union will grant. So the board needs to make this right by the end of October.

I think the teachers are being fair. The proposed raises in the contract rejected by the school board are moderate and well below what some educators in neighboring districts make.

Over five years, the proposed pay increases are: 6.11% in 2023-24, 6.59% in 2024-25, 6.03% in 2025-26, 4.38% in 2026-27, and 3.26% in 2027-28.

If they can afford relatively similar pay scales at West Mifflin, Steel Valley and other neighboring districts, MASD should be able to do so, too. The school board needs to make this work.

The district should be open about its finances. How much exactly would this cost? What cost saving measures can be conducted to reach this goal? And no ridiculous speculation about how much this might cost from board members with no financial background. These numbers should come from the experts. Facts not politics.

Obviously this should be done without a tax increase. I think it is entirely realistic to expect such an outcome without further information to the contrary. However, let’s be real. Ensuring fair pay for our teachers needs to be done even if that means raising taxes.

The heart of a school is its teachers. You can’t have a great school without great educators and you won’t have them without fair pay.

We are already being eaten alive by charter schools. Every child living in the district who goes to a charter school takes away money that would have gone to fund MASD. The district paid $14 million toward charter school tuition in 2022-23, according to Domowicz. He budgeted $16 million next year. That’s 17 percent of the new budget going toward charter schools.

If MASD doesn’t have quality teachers and a quality academic program, we’ll lose even more to these privatized schools. The only way to reverse the trend is to provide the best education and get the word out.

If we leave schooling to the competing piranha charter schools, they will gobble up our taxes while we have no say whether they are raised or not since most charter schools have no elected school boards.

McKeesport School Directors may be dysfunctional, but at least they’re elected representatives. At least they are members of the community who are required to listen to the public and conduct business in an open forum.

They could do their jobs better, but at least they’re ours. And we can replace them.

The only way we get MASD back on course is to pass a fair teachers contract. And to do that we need a reputable, reliable business manager. We need to video and stream school board meetings so everyone can see them easily. And we need to cut the crap and start conducting those meetings civilly and respectfully in the spirit of cooperation and the good of the community at large.

The way I see it, these are the first steps to get there.

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Teaching in Pennsylvania’s Unconstitutional School Funding System

September 4, 2023 stevenmsinger Accountability, Allegheny County, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Harrisburg, history, Labor, Learning, Local Control, McKeesport Area School District, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, private schools, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Special Education, Students, Supreme Court, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Uncategorized #FairFundingPA, classroom, education, fair funding, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, school funding, school funding lawsuit, school vouchers, Steel Valley Schools, Supreme Court, teachers

It’s hard not to wonder about things in my new basement classroom.

I kill what bugs I can, wipe away the damp from the desks and try to think over the rattling hum of the ancient overhead heating and cooling system.

The room is about 1/3 smaller than the space I had last year and the class size is about that much larger.

I smile for a moment remembering that after nearly a decade of litigation, Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court ruled in February that our school funding system violates the constitutional rights of students in poorer school districts like where I teach.

The deadline to challenge this ruling expired in July.

So where’s the additional funding?

I wonder about this as I prepare to teach classes at Steel Valley School District in the western part of the state near Pittsburgh.

Plaintiffs including six school districts, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools claimed that billions more dollars in state aid are necessary to meet the state’s constitutional obligation.

And the judge agreed, but why didn’t she direct the state legislature on exactly how much more state aid to distribute and how?

I mean even Judge Judy would have done that! She would NOT have said, “You owe him money! Now figure out how much and pay him somehow!”

I wonder about that as I get sick from the damp and the mold in my new classroom space.

I wonder about it as I see the school library in my alma mater of McKeesport Area High School permanently closed, the books given away years after the librarian positions were eliminated and the space now becomes a large group instruction room.

I wonder about how students at Steel Valley will access their library now that the sole librarian for the high school and middle school has to teach additional classes reducing the library’s hours almost to nothing.

I wonder about teachers (some retired, others forcibly moved) whose positions were eliminated and the resulting impact on class size and resources.

I wonder about the increasing number of special education students, emotional support students, and English Language Learners all squeezed into larger and larger classes (often with less and less physical space) who are forced to vie with each other for a single teacher’s limited attention.

I wonder about my own daughter in McKeesport sitting in stifling hot classrooms and eating increasingly disgusting lunches.

I wonder about the thousands of experienced teachers who have left the profession for good because of poor salary, poor working conditions, heavy expectations and lack of tools or respect. In McKeesport the school board can’t even agree to the contract its business manager negotiated with its teachers because they think the business manager somehow misunderstood what the district could afford.

I wonder about school boards filled with volunteers who are charged with the task of making water into wine and often end up turning water into vinegar.

I wonder about our legislature mired in a more than two-month-old partisan budget stalemate between Gov. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate.

Republicans (and even the Democratic Governor to some extent) want to use taxpayer dollars to pay for students to attend private and religious schools. GOP operatives have signaled that any discussion about meeting the judge’s order to increase funding will have to involve spending more on school vouchers lite (tax deferment scholarships) or the full fledged variety.

I just don’t get it. The Supreme Court case was about public schools – not private and parochial ones. Taxpayers have no obligation to pay for people to send their kids to schools that aren’t governed by elected school boards, that won’t accept all students regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, etc. Why are Republicans putting their ideological priorities in front of the law? If they want to use taxpayer money for this stuff, just make it a voter referendum. Ask taxpayers if they want their money spent this way. And change the constitution so that it’s legal to do so.

Compliance with the judge’s ruling should have nothing to do with it. Instead we should look to ensure every public school district has enough staff to keep class size low and constructive. We should ensure all schools have safe buildings and grounds. We should make sure all schools have broad curriculum with plenty of extracurricular activities and opportunities for students to learn. We should make sure all students have the services they need and the opportunities to access those services.

But we’re not doing that.

We’re just playing politics as usual.

Meanwhile in classrooms across the state the situation gets worse every day.

Parents, students and teachers waited almost a decade for this ruling. And it looks like we’ll have to wait even longer for anything of substance to actually happen because of it.

Our schools are drowning and our kids inside them. No one is even looking for a life preserver.

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Where Have School Libraries Gone?

August 25, 2023 stevenmsinger Accountability, Allegheny County, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, history, Labor, Learning, literature, Local Control, McKeesport Area School District, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology, Uncategorized anti-intellectualism, Austin Davis, banned books, budget cuts, education, librarian, library, literacy, Politics, public schools, reading, school library, schools, teachers

Last week I discovered that an important part of my neighborhood school is gone – the library.

My daughter and I were taking a tour of my old alma mater, McKeesport Area High School, when I noticed the huge empty space where all the books used to be.

“What happened to the library?” I asked the guidance counselor who was showing us where my daughter’s classes would be this year.

Nowhere. Turns out it’s closed – for good.

The school board eliminated its last two librarian positions in 2018 to save money. Even then these had been itinerant librarians who jumped between buildings keeping the libraries open whenever possible but not all day, every day.

Since they’ve been gone, for the past five years teachers could still take their classes to each building library, however, without someone to sort and organize the books, it wasn’t worth the trip. So at the end of last school year, the remaining books in the high school were given away to students and teachers.

This year the high school’s ex-library space is set to become a large group instruction room.

And that may be the fate for the other libraries at the district’s two elementaries and middle school sometime in the future. My daughter tells me both Francis McClure and Founders Hall (the other two district schools she attended) have libraries but her classes rarely went there. It’s probably the same at Twin Rivers, the district’s other elementary school.

What a pity!

When I walked passed the space that used to house the high school library, I saw a few random books piled up on packing pallets ready to be taken away.

I can still remember what the room used to look like 30 years ago when I went to school there – the rows and rows of sturdy wooden shelves. I remember sitting in comfy chairs at wide tables with surfaces worn smooth by years and years of use.

Library time had been so special – curling up with a book and being transported away from the here and now. How many papers had I written with help from those books? How many books had I checked out over the years? Horror stories, joke books, historical narratives, books of world records, myths, reference texts…

My daughter will never know what that’s like unless I take her somewhere outside of the district. There is a local Carnegie library, but there’s nothing like having all of that just a few steps away.

Now I know what some of you probably are thinking: This is 2023. Why do we even need libraries anymore? Can’t kids just use the Internet?

There are many problems with this. Yes, all students in the district have access to Chrome Books and Internet connections in school. But every book is not available on-line. In fact, the number and variety of books available digitally is much smaller than most public or school libraries typically have in their collections – if you’re not going to pay an additional fee.

I can read most of the classics of world literature on the Internet, but anything that isn’t in the public domain is going to require me to pony up some dough. And the same goes for most respected resources.

Want an article from a local or national newspaper or even a magazine? Most require subscriptions to access articles – especially articles from their archives. You can find some free on-line encyclopedias but the articles are limited and it can be difficult for children (and some adults) to be able to tell which are most trustworthy. Wikipedia is still one of the most cited sources, and as useful as it is, you can’t trust it as well as the kind of reference books you’d find in most libraries.

McKeesport Area School District (MASD) isn’t the only public school greatly reducing or doing away with its school libraries.

The School Library Journal and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported:

“Between the 1999–2000 and 2015–16 school years, the NCES reports that the profession lost the equivalent of more than 10,000 full-time school librarian positions nationwide. That translates to a 19 percent drop in the workforce, from 53,659 to 43,367. The most rapid declines happened from 2009–10 to 2013–14. The decline slowed from then to 2014–15; but resumed larger losses in 2015–16, the latest data available.”

We see school libraries being closed in Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, etc. A 2016 report in The Guardian indicates how serious the problem is worldwide:

“Libraries should be a right in schools. We must give pupils the opportunity to go to a quiet place to do extra study or to choose a book to read. It is particularly important to children from deprived areas. Opening a library door helps children open their mind. For many, books are too expensive and a library allows students to borrow them.”

The problems is often one of priorities. Districts would rather spend billions on technology than libraries. However, both are important. Schools should not have to choose. They should make more diligent decisions about which technologies are most essential instead of buying every new techno-fad with huge promises and no track record.

In the most impoverished districts, the problem isn’t just what hardware or software to purchase, but how to keep the district afloat without cutting vital services like libraries.

In 2018 when the MASD board eliminated the librarian positions, district officials said the cuts were because of “budgetary constraints” combined with the rise of charter school costs.

Every child living in the district who goes to a charter school takes away funding that would have gone to pay for all the kids attending the distict. MASD paid $2 million toward charter school tuition in 2006-07, which has risen to $14 million in 2022-23, according to Business Manager Scott Domowicz.

If this continues, Domowicz said in May that he expects the district will need to pay $16 million next year. That’s 17 percent of the new budget going toward charter schools.

What a pity that parents who remove their children from authentic public schools are making it more difficult for children in those schools to have access to a campus library!

But they’re also depriving their own children of the same amenity since charter schools are much less likely to have library facilities at all.

According to NCES, in 2020–21 only 52 percent of charter schools had a library media center. And only one-third of these charter school media centers had full-time, paid, state-certified library media center specialists, compared to two-thirds of authentic public schools. It’s actually worse than it seems because these statistics include learning resource centers that are entirely on-line without any physical books. So charter schools actually have fewer traditional libraries than quoted here.

Neighboring districts to MASD have dealt with the issue in similar ways.

Nearby Steel Valley School District (SVSD) still has a library for the middle – high school campus staffed with a full time librarian.

However, the librarian’s schedule is often taken up with teaching and/or study halls making it very difficult for teachers to take their classes to the library.

If administrators and school board members don’t prioritize keeping the library open during the school day, it’s only a matter of time before SVSD goes the way of MASD.

And if that’s not scary enough, think of the academic impact.

There is evidence that school libraries help increase standardized test scores. According to Phi Delta Kappan: Data from more than 34 statewide studies suggest that students tend to earn better standardized test scores in schools that have strong library programs.

It is no coincidence that this is all happening as literacy and facts are being challenged nationwide.

According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), which monitors textual challenges, more than 273 books were challenged or banned in 2020. However, the majority of attempts to remove books go unreported so the reality is probably much higher.

This is part of a concerted effort to make America dumb again. These are political attacks against science, history and facts. It just makes sense they would also target the repositories of these sciences, histories and facts – libraries.

One day our descendants may not even know enough to ask the title with which we began this article. Instead of “Where have school libraries gone?” they may ask, “What was a library?”

“And what was a school?”

One of the last pictures of McKeesport Area High School’s library – Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis (an MASD alum) talks with students during a visit to the district in February 2023.

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Florida Attempting to Revive the “Happy Slave” Myth as Real History

July 24, 2023 stevenmsinger academic freedom, Accountability, Civil Rights, Compassion, Education, Florida, history, Learning, literature, Politics, Prejudice, Propaganda, Racism, Republican, School Funding, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Uncategorized Black History, Censorship, education, Florida, Frederick Douglass, freedom, Politics, Ron DeSantis, schools, slavery, teachers, woke

Frederick Douglass was widely considered the most photographed American in the 19th century, though he never smiled in a single portrait.

He stares out of the frame with a look of quiet dignity, but never joviality or contentment.

The reason for this is simple – he didn’t want to perpetuate the myth of the “Happy Slave.”

Douglass was born into bondage until he fled to the North at age 20. He was considered a fugitive for nine more years until 1845 when English friends raised $711.66 to buy his freedom. He was already a famous orator, author and abolitionist.

But he knew the power of a picture and how a still image of him grinning ear-to-ear might be used by slaveholders to indicate that people of color enjoyed their own servitude.

Now 158 years after the Civil War, the Florida Department of Education is trying to perpetuate that same myth with its new guidelines for Black history curriculum in public schools.

Among other things, the guidelines suggest that American slavery was not all bad because enslaved people developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The guidelines say that teachers’ lessons should “examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).”

This seems like a strange thing to emphasize about people who were engaged in back-breaking, life-shortening fieldwork on the cotton, rice and sugar cane plantations. Putting the focus on the various tasks they completed seems to make slavery little more than another type of “agricultural work” – just one of many “trades.”

But we’re losing sight of the fact that it was forced labor! That seems an essential feature – a defining characteristic!

So enslaved people might acquire skills in bondage that they did not previously possess. They could sometimes become expert artisans who might earn money to buy things.

But they did not own their own bodies! They were property! That limits your buying power in kind of a major way – not to mention your humanity!

No skills, nothing you could purchase could possibly make you cherish your lack of freedom.

In his autobiography, Douglass wrote:

“I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom.”

People like to tell stories of enslaved people singing on the plantations to ease their load and as proof of how much they enjoyed their work.

Of this, Douglass wrote:

“Every tone was testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. . . . To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. . . . The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.”

The new education guidelines in the Sunshine state are the latest since the Stop Woke Act was enacted in July 2022. The law says discussions about race must be taught in an “objective manner” and should not be “used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.” It also states that students should not feel guilty for actions taken in the past by people of their same race or origin.

Florida has taken broad measures to align its education standards with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s vision of a state “where woke goes to die,” which constrains teachers to discuss race, gender and sexuality, if at all, only in a way in which the Governor would approve.

The irony is that these guidelines show exactly why teachers need to discuss these subjects more openly and freely – why authentic history MUST be taught – not some far right fairytale vision of the past.

Not only are these guidelines insensitive at best, state policymakers do not understand the actual record. They seem to believe in Rudyard Kipling’s “white man’s burden” to colonize, civilize, and Christianize non-Europeans – that slavery was a means of protecting and bringing Africans into the civilized era.

But this is pure nonsense – what’s worse it’s antiquated nonsense.

People who were kidnapped from Africa and forced into slavery across the Atlantic were not savages who were civilized by white slavers.

These were people with their own cultures, heritages and, yes, skills.

Most Africans who were abducted to North America were from West Africa and West Central Africa.

Each regional clan or group had professions or crafts such as weaving, basket making, potting, or iron working. They grew agricultural products, made textiles, manufactured goods, music and art. They made traditional foods and had unique customs.

These skills were used by enslaved people in the American South and beyond creating many industries in the US, but their contributions were most often erased.

Take Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

Around 1850, an enslaved man named Nathan “Nearest” Green taught a white man, Jack Daniel, the art of whiskey distillation – though it would take another 150 years before this would be publicly acknowledged.

Daniel was an orphan working as a day laborer on the farm of Dan Call, a Lynchburg preacher, grocer and distiller. Daniel took an interest in the distillery and pleaded to learn the trade. Call eventually introduced him to Green, who he called “the best whiskey maker that I know of,” according to a 1967 biography, Jack Daniel’s Legacy. He instructed the enslaved man to teach the young boy his distilling process.

Green taught Daniel “sugar maple charcoal filtering” (now called the Lincoln County Process), a universally accepted critical step in the making of Tennessee whiskey. This involves filtering the whiskey through wooden charcoal chips before being placed in casks for aging. Food historians believe this was inspired by similar charcoal filtering techniques used to purify water and foods in West Africa. The process imparts a unique flavor that set Jack Daniel’s whiskey apart from its competitors.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, Daniel bought Call’s distillery, renaming it after himself. More than seven generations of the Green family worked either for or with the Jack Daniel’s brand.

It’s important to note that these were skills Green already possessed. They were not learned in bondage. They were brought with him to this country.

Another example of this would be Black cowboys.

Despite the relative lack of Black faces in Hollywood Westerns, Black men made up about 1 in 4 cowboys in the old West.

Men of color handled cattle, tamed horses, worked ranches, encountered outlaws and starred in rodeos. It’s estimated that anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 Black cowboys were part of the legendary cattle drives of the 1800s.

Many Black cowboys developed their skills in Africa – not America. People abducted from countries such as Ghana and Gambia were already experienced in managing large herds of cattle and their abilities with animals were highly desirable.

During the Civil War, some Texas ranchers who fought with the Confederacy left enslaved people behind to maintain their ranches.

Once again these were skills brought to this country just as the people possessing them were – by force.

The Cotton Gin offers a more contentious example.

Eli Whitney, a white man, is given credit for inventing the machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber.

However, there is much debate about where he got the idea.

Some historians believe Catherine Greene, a woman he was living with, devised the cotton gin and Whitney merely built it and applied for the patent, since at that time women were not allowed to do this. Others believe the idea was Whitney’s but Greene played an important role as both designer and financier.

However, according to the University of Houston’s College of Engineering, Whitney got the idea from an enslaved person known to history only as Sam. Sam’s father came up with a kind of comb to get the seeds out of a cotton boll. Whitney heard about the idea and simply mechanized it.

Whether Sam or his father were able to invent the cotton gin because of skills learned in America or Africa is hard to say, but they certainly didn’t profit off of them. If they were given any remuneration, it was nothing in comparison to Whitney.

Ironically, this device made the mass cultivation of cotton profitable. The result was that the enslaved population in the United States jumped from about 250,000 around the time of the Revolutionary War to around 4 million at the time of the Civil War.

Sadly, this is far from the only example of white people getting the credit for the intellectual work of enslaved people.

Jo Anderson came up with the idea or at least co-invented a reaping machine that revolutionized agriculture. But the credit went to Cyrus McCormick, the white man who owned him.

Cutting wheat in the early 1800s was slow, difficult and labor-intensive. Workers had to walk and cut the stalks with scythes, and laborers (also called “binders”) walking behind them gathered and tied the stalks into sheaves. The reaper was a device that sheared a wide path of grain. A worker would just need to rake the cut stalks off the machine’s bed onto the ground in ready-to-bind stacks.

In the 1850s, Benjamin Montgomery invented a steamboat propeller designed for shallow water. But since he was enslaved, his invention could not be patented in his name. His owners – future Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his brother Joseph – then tried to patent the propeller in their names but the request was denied since they were not the inventors. It went unpatented.

In 1831, a freed slave named Henry Boyd invented a “Tester Bed” that used wooden side rails. However, he had to let a white man, George Porter, patent his design for him since he could not do it, himself.

Free Black men were technically allowed to patent inventions but it could be incredibly difficult to do so. Often they ended up putting patents in the names of their white lawyers to give them a better shot at acceptance.

While some of these skills may have been learned in servitude, Black people rarely got to experience the rewards they deserved for using them.

It should be achingly obvious that being kidnapped and enslaved did not in the final analysis profit Black people even if they may have occasionally learned skills or earned a little money. Any suggestion otherwise is pure fantasy.

It is a political fiction that is being revived to stop any attempts at actual justice in this country.

Though they are no longer enslaved, African Americans still suffer from the after affects of our peculiar institution. Jim Crow laws continued until the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement. Even then policies like red lining, discriminatory hiring practices, and over-policing of Black neighborhoods continued. Though progress has been made at each step along the way, Black people still suffer from institutional racism of which Florida’s new educational guidelines are a prime example.

Just in our public education system, children of color are more likely to find themselves in under-funded schools with fewer opportunities, narrowed curriculum and subjected to evaluation by biased standardized tests. They are targeted by fly-by-night charter schools which often have no elected school boards and worse academic records than neighborhood authentic public schools.

Florida’s new guidelines are another attempt to erase the problem without fixing it – to make even stating the racial realities impossible for teachers in the classroom and thus unlikely to be learned by anyone who doesn’t experience this type of inequity first hand.

As Douglass said in a speech in Cork, Ireland:

“The people of America deprive us [Black people] of every privilege—they turn round and taunt us with our inferiority!—they stand upon our necks, they impudently taunt us, and ask the question, why we don’t stand up erect? They tie our feet, and ask us why we don’t run? That is the position of America in the present time. The laws forbid education, the mother must not teach her child the letters of the Lord’s prayer; and then while this unfortunate state of things exist they turn round and ask, why we are not moral and intelligent; and tell us, because we are not, that they have the right to enslave [us].”

It’s no wonder he did not smile in his photographs.

I doubt his expression would change much, If he were alive today and presented with Florida’s idea of Black history.

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Will PA Finally Hold Cyber Charter Schools Accountable?

July 10, 2023 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, Democrat, edtech, Education, Harrisburg, history, Josh Shapiro, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Student Mobility, Students, Taxation, Teachers, Technology, Tom Wolf Cyber Charter Schools, education, House Bill 1422, Josh Shapiro, PA House, PA Senate, Pennsylvania, Politics, Students, teachers

Pennsylvania pays more than $1 billion every year for its 14 cyber charter schools.

And overpays them by more than $450 million each year.

Now – after half a decade of legislative shenanigans – a new bill actually has the possibility of being passed to hold these types of schools accountable.

Last week House Bill 1422 passed by a vote of 122-81, with all Democrats voting for it, joined by 20 Republicans. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro would likely sign the legislation if it comes to his desk.

So now it goes to its biggest hurdle – the Republican-controlled Senate.

The state GOP has held up every cyber charter reform measure since the previous Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf suggested it. However, now that Democrats hold a slim majority in the House, Republicans can no longer stymie it completely.

One of the largest problems centers on the cost of doing business. Cyber charter schools educate students online via computer. So why do local public schools have to pay cyber charters the same money as brick and mortar schools to educate students living in their boundaries? Cyber charters don’t have nearly the brick and mortar – no athletic fields, busing, etc. And the physical structures they do have are much smaller. The result is underfunded public schools and cyber charters bursting with cash.

That means higher public school taxes for you and me while cyber charters spend money like it’s going out of style.

The new measure would stop that by telling public schools exactly how much they must pay cyber charters – $8,000 per student not receiving special education services. Most schools currently spend approximately $10,000.

In addition, cyber charter schools would no longer be given more funding for special education students than authentic public schools. Tuition for special education students would be aligned with the system used for authentic public school districts. These measures, alone, are expected to result in about $456 million in savings.

But that’s not all!

The legislation also seeks additional transparency, eliminating conflicts of interest and requiring cyber charters to comply with the state’s ethics and open records law as authentic public schools are already required to do. It would ban enrollment incentives, restrict advertising and event sponsorships.

Gov. Wolf’s original proposal went even further. He had asked the General Assembly to place a moratorium on new cyber charter schools and cap enrollment in low-performing charter schools until they improve. None of that appears in the current legislation.

The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Joe Ciresi, D-Montgomery, said the goal was not to close cyber charter programs, but to stop overfunding them. He said:

“We’re looking to put money back into the public schools and also leave the choice that’s there. We should have choice in this state. We’re asking that it’s a fair playing field.”

A lot of the prohibitions in the new legislation seem to have been inspired by real practices by current cyber charter schools like Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA), the largest school of this type in the state.

For example, CCA spent approximately $19 million on marketing over a two-year period, including a float featuring Jerold the Bookworm for a Thanksgiving Parade.

The proposed law would prohibit all public schools from paying to sponsor public events such as parades and professional sporting events. Moreover, it would require all public schools who advertise to state that the cost of tuition and other costs are covered by taxpayer dollars.

CCA also uses tax dollars to provide $200 for monthly field trips that can be of debatable educational value. They’ve gone to petting zoos, laser tag, bowling and kayaking. A parent of a CCA student even bragged on Facebook about using these funds for Dave and Busters Arcade, a Motley Crue concert, Eagles tickets, and family vacations to Universal Studios and Disney, according to Education Voters of Pa.

The new bill would prohibit cyber charter schools from paying or reimbursing parents/guardians from educational or field trips as well as offering any cash, gifts or other incentives for enrolling or considering enrolling in a cyber charter school.

It would also force these types of schools to be more financially accountable by requiring them to approve an annual budget by June 30th each year, and make the budget available, as well as imposing fund balance limits so they couldn’t horde taxpayer money – all things already required of authentic public schools.

Charter schools – institutions that are publicly financed but often privately run and not subject to the same rules and regulations as authentic public schools – are still controversial despite the first charter school law being passed in 1991 and having spread through at least 45 states. However, only 27 states also allow CYBER charters like this – schools that teach mostly (or entirely) distance learning through the Internet.

Nationwide, Pennsylvania and Ohio have the largest cyber charter enrollment. In 2020-21, the Keystone State enrolled 61,000 students in cyber charters – and roughly 21,000 attend CCA.

A 2022 report by Children First found that of the states with cyber charters, Pennsylvania spends the most but has the “weakest systems to ensure students and taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.” Moreover, of the roughly $1 billion state taxpayers spend on these schools, several reports suggest that the money comes from the poorest districts, where cyber student academic performance is much lower than at neighboring authentic public schools. These are the students most in need of help.

Many provisions in the proposed bill read like such common sense initiatives, it’s chilling that they aren’t already in place.

The bill would require cyber charter schools to verify the residency of enrolling students, report the number of newly enrolled students and how many of those students have been identified as needing special education. Since cyber charter teachers meet with students online, they would need to visibly see and communicate with enrolled students at least once per week to verify the student’s well-being.

There are also many rules about how a cyber charter school can be governed. You could not have a school director from another school district or a trustee from another charter school serving on the board of the cyber charter school. Boards would require a quorum and a majority vote to take action. They would have to comply with the Sunshine Law, Right-to-Know Law, and the Ethics Act. Cyber charter school boards would need to have at least seven non-related members, at least one of whom must be a parent/guardian of an enrolled student.

But let’s not forget the many ways this new law would make cyber charters more transparent. Cyber charter schools could not lease a facility from a foundation or management company – unfortunately a common practice that allows the school to bill the public for a service to itself multiple times. Any conflicts of interest between the cyber charter school and a foundation or management company would need to be disclosed. Cyber charters would not be allowed to have administrators and their family members serving on the board of a charter school foundation that supports the charter school. No charter school trustee could be employed by the cyber charter school, a foundation that supports the school, or a management company that serves the school. The state Department of Education would need to have access to the records and facilities of any foundation and/or management companies associated with the school. Foundations associated with these schools would need to make budgets, tax returns and audits available.

The overwhelming majority of these regulations simply hold cyber charter schools to the same standard we already use for authentic public schools.

However, what often gets left unsaid is how terribly students do academically at cyber charters – something completely left out of this proposed legislation.

Study after study consistently shows that cyber charters are much less effective than traditional public schools – heck! They’re even less effective than brick and mortar charter schools!

A nationwide study by Stanford University found that cyber charters provide 180 days less of math instruction and 72 days less of reading instruction than traditional public schools.

Keep in mind that there are only 180 days in an average school year. So cyber charters provide less math instruction than not going to school at all.

The same study found that 88 percent of cyber charter schools have weaker academic growth than similar brick and mortar schools.

Student-to-teacher ratios average about 30:1 in online charters, compared to 20:1 for brick and mortar charters and 17:1 for traditional public schools.

Researchers concluded that these schools have an “overwhelming negative impact” on students.

And these results were duplicated almost exactly by subsequent studies from Penn State University in 2016 (enrolling a student in a Pennsylvania cyber charter school is equal to “roughly 90 fewer days of learning in reading and nearly 180 fewer days of learning in math”) and the National Education Policy Center in 2017 (cyber charters “performed significantly worse than feeder schools in both reading and math”).

The legislation being considered here does the important work of holding cyber charters financially accountable. However, there still remains the very real question of whether this type of educational institution is viable under normal circumstances.

It will be interesting to see if Republicans find even accountability a prospect worthy of a vote in the state Senate. Lobbyists for charter school networks like K12 Inc. and Connections Education have spent billions of dollars against something like this ever happening.

I guess we’ll soon see who the Commonwealth GOP really listens to – voters or corporate interests.

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Teaching Blind Obedience is Child Abuse

June 15, 2023June 15, 2023 stevenmsinger academic freedom, Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, history, Homework, Journalism, Learning, Parents, Philosophy, Politics, Prejudice, Propaganda, Republican, Schools, student teacher relationship, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Uncategorized authentic teaching, authority, child abuse, children, critical thinking, Duggar, Howard Zinn, independence, obedience, obey, parenting, Politics, Psychology, public schools, religious fundamentalism, self-discipline, Stanley Milgram

My daughter is not a little soldier.

She does not jump at my orders.

She can be rude, crude and badly behaved.

But I wouldn’t want her any other way – because the alternative is worse.

The same goes for my middle school students.

If you enter my classroom, you may find some children questioning my assignments.

“Mr. Singer, why can’t we chew gum in class?”

“Mr. Singer, why do you give so much homework?”

“Mr. Singer, why do we have to write a rough draft? Why can’t we just write a final copy?”

But you’ll notice my students almost always call me “Mr. Singer.” The reason is trust and respect.

Over time we’ve formed a relationship with each other where they’ve learned to respect me as their teacher and I have tried to earn that trust by treating them kindly and giving good reason for the things I tell them to do.

They are obedient (for the most part), but not BLINDLY obedient.

That may sound like splitting hairs but it’s one of the most important distinctions in education.

When someone knows WHY they’re doing something, they are an agent – they are responsible for their own actions. They are self-disciplined – not drones acting without thinking solely because they were told to do so.

That is incredibly important.

Think of what blind obedience does to adults.

American historian Howard Zinn famously put it this way:

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders… and millions have been killed because of this obedience… Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… [and] the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

When I was a college undergraduate, I was unsure what to major in and I began my undergraduate work in psychology. Of all the things I learned in those early survey classes before changing course to writing, philosophy and (after a career in journalism) education, the lesson I’ll never forget is the groundbreaking 1961 study by Stanley Milgram, a Yale University psychologist.

Milford famously wondered how many people would willingly comply if a person in a position of authority told university students to deliver a 400-volt electrical shock to another person. His students predicted that no more than 3% of participants would deliver the maximum shocks. However, when he actually conducted the experiment, 65% delivered the maximum shocks.

During the experiment, each subject was asked to press a button that they believed gave increasingly high voltage electric shocks to the student on the other side of a wall if the student gave the wrong answer to a teacher’s questions. It should be noted that the students on the other side of the wall did not actually receive shocks, but the participants BELIEVED that they truly were shocking their fellow students by pressing the button.

Many of the subjects, while believing that the student was actually receiving shocks and hearing their protests and cries for mercy – including complaints of a heart condition – became increasingly agitated and even angry at the experimenter. Yet 36 out of 40 people, in turn, continued to do what they were instructed to do all the way to the end. Even when the student became silent when apparently receiving a shock from a switch labeled “danger: severe shock”, the subject continued based on the instruction that silence is to be read as a wrong answer.

This experiment (which would be highly unethical today) has become a classic in psychology, demonstrating the dangers of obedience.

Milgram wrote in 1974:

“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

In fact, these experiments were inspired by history – specifically by the Nazi, Adolph Eichmann, who defended himself at the Nuremberg Trials by saying that he was simply following orders when he commanded the deaths of millions of Jews during the Holocaust.

This is what blind obedience gets us – a society of Nazis willing to do anything if told to do so by the proper authorities.

Parents and teachers are in a delicate situation then.

We’re responsible for guiding children into adulthood, and that often does require a measure of obedience. The question is how to get there without stripping away a child’s agency? How to get children to do generally what is necessary for their learning while still leaving their independence intact?

Let’s be honest – schools play an essential role in teaching obedience. It’s a critical life skill that helps children learn to follow rules and directions. Without obedience, adolescents would have difficulty following rules at home, at school, and in society.

One of the ways schools teach obedience is through rules and consequences. When children break rules, they face consequences such as being sent to the principal’s office, getting detention or being suspended. Such consequences help children learn that there are repercussions for their actions.

Schools also teach obedience through modeling. Teachers and administrators try to set good examples for children by obeying rules, themselves. When children see adults following the rules, they are more likely to do so themselves.

Finally, schools teach obedience through positive reinforcement. When children do the right thing, they are rewarded with praise, stickers, or other incentives. This positive reinforcement helps children learn that obedience is a good thing and that it is something that should be rewarded.

However, as children grow older, it is just as vital that teachers and parents not only foster obedience but also critical thinking about that obedience.

When a child questions a rule (and they will question it), we should not instantly meet that questioning with negativity or shock. We should calmly and rationally answer.

We should not get angry at questions, we should welcome them. Questioning should be a part of instruction because as educators and parents we should not want blind obedience. We should want trust and understanding.

As Albert Einstein said, “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”

I was reminded of this when watching the recent documentary “Shiny Happy People” about the Duggar family. The brood of religious fundamentalist Christians made their TV debut in 2004, going on to become a household name with their TLC show “19 Kids and Counting,” presenting Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their ever-expanding household as a seemingly “perfect” family.

However, behind the scenes, the family’s theocratic hierarchy led to sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, which was allegedly brushed aside by their church.

In 2015, it was revealed that the Duggars’ eldest son, Josh James, had molested numerous underage girls, including four of his siblings, when he was aged 14 to 15. These revelations led to the cancellation of “19 Kids and Counting.” In 2021, Josh was arrested after police discovered he had been receiving and was in possession of child pornography.

The family belongs to the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), a nondenominational Christian sect that serves as an umbrella organization for several ministries founded by minister Bill Gothard in 1961.

According to the documentary, IBLP teachings require absolute obedience. Authority is distributed in various circles – God being the highest authority, followed by the family’s father, etc. Women are considered to be among the lowest forms of authority. In fact, two of Josh’s sisters who he had abused were even made to go on TV to speak in defense of their abuser.

We hear a lot of propaganda from religious fundamentalists about how public schools groom students into being politically liberal. However, teaching blind obedience is the true grooming. It is setting people up to become victims of anyone who they perceive as having authority over them.

This is what made the Duggar children ready made victims for their own brother. It sets children up to be easily abused, gaslit, fooled and dominated.

And in doing research on this topic, I found many articles defending absolute obedience by reference to the Bible. The idea that authority is a hierarchy and we should simply follow the instructions of those above us in that hierarchy is as rampant as it is perverted.

Any discipline adults give to children should be in service of them eventually becoming independent and self-disciplined. That means being able to make independent choices about their own behavior without prompting from an adult.

There is a difference between being self-disciplined and being obedient.

A self-disciplined child will complete an action, regardless of who is watching. She will do the behavior because it is the right thing to do. In contrast, an obedient child may follow directions to please a parent, to avoid a consequence or to receive a reward. Being obedient is following directions or commands from an adult. It is exhibiting “good behavior” when an adult is present. Meanwhile, having self-discipline is making those choices without the presence or reminders from adults.

It may be tempting to see children marching in line or sitting calmly with their hands in their laps and consider that an ideal. But as children grow, we must learn to tolerate more frequent independence.

In fact, we must do more than tolerate it. We must cherish it.

The opposite is so much worse.

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Efforts to Legalize Child Labor are the Next Logical Step After Corporate Education Reform

June 2, 2023June 2, 2023 stevenmsinger academic freedom, Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", COVID-19, Cyber Charter Schools, Democrat, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, history, John Podesta, Journalism, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Media, Obama, Parents, Philosophy, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Student Mobility, Students, Teachers, Uncategorized, Violence Against Children Americans for Prosperity, Barack Obama, Center for American Progress, child labor, children, dehumanization, economics, education, Fair Labor Standards Act, Hillary Clinton, National Federation of independent Business, Politics, Profit, public schools, Rex Tillerson

Standardized testing.

Privatizing public schools.

Defunding poor students.

What’s next?

Republicans across the United States have an answer – legalizing child labor.

Since 1938 with the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration restricted children younger than 14 from being employed, and put strict rules in place on when those younger than 18 may be employed, for how many hours and in what fields.

Today Republicans across the country seem poised to repeal those protections.

In Wisconsin, Republicans want to allow 14-year-olds to work in bars and restaurants serving alcohol. These kids aren’t legally allowed to drink the beverages they’re pouring but I’m sure that won’t cause any problems. Nooooo!

In Ohio, the GOP majority legislature is trying to allow kids ages 14 and 15 to work until 9 p.m. during the school year with their parents’ permission. Those teens better make sure their homework is done before their work-WORK because there won’t be anytime before bed. (No matter that this is illegal under federal law. I guess the rest of the country will have to change to accommodate the Buckeye State.)

Donald Trump’s former press secretary, nepo baby, and current Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law in March eliminating permits that employers used to have to check to verify a child’s age and their parent’s consent before hiring a minor. Without this, it’s much easier for companies caught violating child labor laws to claim ignorance. But, hey, freedom. Right?

And that’s not even counting measures to loosen child labor laws that have been passed in New Jersey, New Hampshire and Iowa. (Iowa Republicans were even going to let 14- and 15-year-olds work in dangerous fields including mining, logging and meatpacking, before coming to their senses!) In the last two years, GOP Lawmakers have proposed loosening child labor laws in at least 10 states, according to a report published last month by the Economic Policy Institute. Some of these bills became law and others were withdrawn or vetoed.

Make no mistake. These are not aberrations. This is the thrust of the mainstream Republican party today.

National business lobbyists, chambers of commerce and well-funded conservative groups such as Americans for Prosperity – a conservative political network – and the National Federation of Independent Business – an organization that typically aligns with Republicans – are backing the state bills to increase teen participation in the workforce.

Meanwhile, child labor violations have increased by almost 70% since 2018, according to The Department of Labor. The agency is increasing enforcement and asking Congress to allow larger fines against violators.

How did we get here?

Corporate education reform.

It’s like the old adage: if a frog is suddenly dropped into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out and save itself from impending death. But, if the frog is gently placed in lukewarm water, with the temperature rising slowly, it will not perceive any danger to itself and will be cooked to death.

That’s what our national education policy has been for the last two decades. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been slowly raising the temperature and now the water is boiling over.

We’ve been increasingly treating children less as individual humans who are ends in themselves and instead as cogs in the machine, widgets, things to be molded and manipulated for the good of the economy.

Here we have an entire industry of standardized testing that makes its money as a parasite on the public school system. The same multi-billion dollar corporations design the tests, grade the tests and then offer remediation when kids don’t pass the tests. It’s a classic captive market where the provider has no incentive but to perpetuate the conditions that increase its bottom line. Students aren’t the consumers of this product – school districts are – and they have no choice but participate. It’s encoded in federal and state law. They have to play along and are, themselves, judged by the results of that compliance.

Then we have privatization – charter and voucher schools. These are institutions ostensibly set up to educate students, but unlike authentic public schools, these organizations are allowed to turn a profit. Some of them get to hide behind the label “non-profit” but the result is the same. And once you allow financial gain of this sort into the system, that’s what it’s all about. Kids become a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

And let’s not forget how all of this enters into the finances of public schools. Unlike most countries across the globe, education in the US is supported primarily by local taxes. So rich neighborhoods invariably have robust public schools that provide students with all the resources they need. And poor communities have impoverished schools where students get only whatever parents and teachers can scrounge together. In this country, children are not a worthy cause all by themselves – we only care about them if they’re OURS.

The entire apparatus of corporate education reform is focused around jobs. In this ideology, the function of school is to prepare students for employment – that is all. It is not to make students good citizens, knowledgeable voters or even fully realized human beings. Rich kids are prepared for the jobs that will keep them rich. Poor kids are prepared for the service industry – so the rich have someone to wait on them in restaurants and stock grocery store shelves.

The fact that the Covid pandemic has reduced adults willing to continue working in these fields for such low wages has only motivated the wealthy and powerful to fill those vacancies with younger-and-younger people who won’t understand how much they’re being taken advantage of and won’t complain.

For example, take this quote from Rex Tillerson, former ExxonMobil CEO:

“I’m not sure public schools understand that we’re their customer—that we, the business community, are your customer. What they don’t understand is they are producing a product at the end of that high school graduation. Now is that product in a form that we, the customer, can use it? Or is it defective, and we’re not interested? American schools have got to step up the performance level—or they’re basically turning out defective products that have no future. Unfortunately, the defective products are human beings. So it’s really serious. It’s tragic. But that’s where we find ourselves today.”

We find the same rhetoric on the left as well as the right.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) – a so-called liberal Washington think tank lead by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton minions like John Podesta – repeat the same conservative talking points. For example, CAP published and article called “Preparing American Students for the Workforce of the Future” which read like a companion piece to Tillerson’s diatribe. They did concede that being ready for “civic life” is important as well as being “career ready,” though.

So far, few Democrats have taken the next logical step along with their Republican colleagues.

And they ARE colleagues. Don’t let the hyped up media culture war distract you. When you take out social issues, America’s two parties are as different as milk chocolate and dark chocolate. They’re the same basic thing separated only by intensity and bitterness.

Republicans are ready to undo child labor protections. Democrats will only take away kids’ rights at school.

This is what you get when you dehumanize students. This is what you get when you signal it is okay to be a predator on student needs to help fulfill the needs of the economy.

Money comes first. Students – children – are a distant second.

So finally the chickens of corporate education reform are coming home to roost. I don’t think we’re going to like the eggs.

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After School Satan Clubs Are Teaching Public School Districts an Important Lesson in Free Speech

May 17, 2023May 18, 2023 stevenmsinger academic freedom, Accountability, Child Predators, Child Safety, church and state, Civil Rights, Education, history, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Prejudice, Republican, School Choice, school violence, Schools, Social Justice, South Carolina, student action, Student Mobility, Students, Uncategorized After School Satan Club, church and state, education, First Amendment, free speech, free thought, freedom from religion, freedom of speech, Good News Club, Politics, public schools, religion, religious fanaticism, schools, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

Be careful what you wish for – you just might get it.

That seems to be the lesson public school districts across the country are being forced to learn from an unlikely source – Satan.

Thousands of districts in the US allow religious organizations and clubs to operate on public school property, especially after classes are over.

So The Satanic Temple (TST) – an organization that’s not really Satanic or a temple – goes around proposing After-School Satan Clubs at the same districts – and all Hell breaks loose.

Keep in mind none of these districts need open their grounds to religious organizations. They could simply cite the Separation of Church and State and be done with it.

The first clause in the Bill of Rights states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” This has been interpreted to mean that the government shall neither support nor prohibit religious expression.

Our right-leaning Supreme Court has chipped away at this notion allowing all kinds of government support – however logic and consistency still mean something.

Districts apparently CAN ignore the Church/State conundrum – BUT – if a district is going to violate this tenant for one organization, it has to be willing to do so for all.

And that is why TST is making this point.

Unlike the Church of Satan, a religious institution founded in the 1960s that literally worships the Biblical devil, TST is a non-theistic organization which uses hyperbole and humor to protest the Religious Right and authoritarianism. The organization says it strives to “provide a safe and inclusive alternative” to Christian-based groups that may seek to “convert school children to their belief system.”

The TST’s latest victory is the first After-School Satan Club in Pennsylvania, which is set to hold its inaugural meeting today.

All it took was a police investigation and the threat of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to make it happen.

The Saucon Valley School District in the Lehigh Valley already allows explicitly religious organizations to hold meetings on school grounds like the Good News Club run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, a Christian fundamentalist organization that seeks to influence schoolchildren as young as five.

So TST requested permission to start a new club on district property with the slogan “Educatin’ with Satan.”

“Proselytization is not our goal, and we’re not interested in converting children to Satanism,” writes TST. “We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of everlasting other-worldly horrors.”

The response was immediate with messages from concerned citizens flooding into the district.

The point went over many people’s heads. “What’s next, the after-school heroin club?” asked someone in an email.

Others seemed to understand the district’s hypocrisy in blurring the lines between Church and State: “Please shut down all religious after-school clubs if that’s what needs to be done to keep Satan out of that building,” read another email.

And then there was this: “I’m gonna’ come in there and shoot everybody,” said a recorded voice.

The caller wasn’t some hooded devil worshipper. He allegedly was a 20-year-old North Carolina man who was worried, “the After-School Satan Club is trying to turn kids into devils,” according to law enforcement.

Shortly after, the suspect, Ceu “Van” Uk, was arrested by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police. He was arraigned on a charge of Terroristic Threats and sent to jail in lieu of $75,000 bail. He is expected to be extradited to Pennsylvania, according to a news release.

Though violence was averted, the school board and administrators denied the club’s request. They even blamed the After-School Satan Club for the controversy despite it being the target of Uk’s violence.

“Our community has experienced chaos. Our students, staff, and teachers have had to endure a threat to their safety and welfare,” Superintendent Jaime Vlasaty wrote.

“The gravity of feelings of instability, anxiety, and fear have been profound.”

This is exactly what you get when you tear down the wall between Church and State. But the board eventually relented and allowed the club to meet after threats by the ACLU.

Both the national and Pennsylvania chapter of the ACLU sent a letter to the Saucon Valley School District demanding that it allow the After-School Satan Club access to school facilities just as it allows other clubs. The district eventually agreed.

The club, which has six student members and is the first of its kind in the Commonwealth, New Jersey or Delaware, is expected to have its first meeting today in the district middle school.

Sadly, the Pennsylvania incident is just the most recent one in which religious people have resorted to threats of violence to stop others from the same religious expression they take for granted.

Another After-School Satan Club, which was allowed to meet in February at an elementary school in the Chesapeake School District in Virginia, followed a similar path.

Parents protested outside B.M. Williams Primary School, but the first meeting was held on February 16 anyway and reportedly attended by nine students.

Less than a week later, the elementary school was forced to evacuate following a bomb threat from an email saying the school promoted “devil worship,” according to local media.

The email mentioned threats toward three people: a Chesapeake school board member, the superintendent and the organizer of the After-School Satan Club. “You are evil, there is no other way to put it,” the email reads. “You promote devil worship and unIslamic values.”

It’s ironic how so-called religious values like tolerance and non-violence are more frequently found with Satan than adherents of faiths that are supposed to be espousing those beliefs.

There’s also something glaringly disingenuous when schools complain about these issues – they could avoid clubs of a religious nature entirely.

Just respect the Separation of Church and State and your problem goes away.

If people want religious clubs, hold them where they belong – churches, mosques, synagogues and other houses of worship. Don’t pretend to legitimize your faith by placing these clubs at school – the same place kids learn science, history, math and reading.

There are only seven active After-School Satan Clubs, according to June Everett, TST’s director for the project. Donovan Elementary School in Lebanon City Schools near Cincinnati, Ohio, hosts another such club.

By contrast, there are more than 4,000 Good News Clubs in public schools (often elementary schools) in America. Their stated purpose is:

“to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and establish (disciple) them in the Word of God and in a local church for Christian living.”

The lessons taught in these Evangelical and similar clubs are far more destructive than anything you’ll find in an irreverent “Satan” club. Good News Clubs and others like them stress Old Testament narratives of a retributive God who punishes sin, warns children that they will suffer an eternity in Hell if they refuse to believe, and stresses complete obedience as the supreme value. They tell children as young as preschoolers that they have “dark” and “sinful” hearts, were born that way, and “deserve to die” and “go to Hell.” Such messages rob children of the innocence and enjoyment of childhood, replacing them with a negative self-image, preoccupation with sin, fear of Hell, and an aversion to critical thinking.

This is because most religious clubs are Biblically based and interpret that text literally. Meanwhile, The Satanic Temple’s more than 700,000 members don’t worship Satan. They take their central figure as a literary character, a symbol for the “Eternal Rebel,” according to their website. They are against “tyrannical authority” and support “individual sovereignty,” as well as empathy, compassion, and defiance.

TST has waged public battles against the religious and GOP right on issues involving First Amendment freedoms, LGBTQ rights, and abortion access.

Their approach has been often irreverent. In keeping with their belief in bodily autonomy, one of the temple members’ latest projects is an online clinic which aims to provide abortion medication by mail. They call it the Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic.

Last October, a Dallas-area Satanic Temple held an “Unbaptism” event. According to its website, an “Unbaptism” is an activity in which “participants renounce superstitions that were imposed upon them without their consent as a child” — essentially, religious beliefs from which adults want to be disentangled. After all, most religions indoctrinate children into their beliefs before they are old enough to understand them or choose the beliefs for themselves. Why not offer them a chance to reject them once they’re mature enough to make a free choice?

The fliers for the Saucon Valley program promised kids ages 5 to 12 science and community service projects, puzzles, games, nature activities, arts and crafts, snacks “& tons of fun.”

This may scare some people, but I say thank goodness for Satan!

It’s time we stop giving religious organizations the moral high ground as a matter of course.

They need to prove their moral worth – and one way to do that would be to stop threatening people who have different beliefs.

Moreover, administrators and school directors need to rediscover their reverence for the Separation of Church and State.

This is one of the bedrock principles on which our nation was founded.

Find your courage to stand up to religious organizations demanding you shred your morals and responsibilities to everyone in the community.

If you value religious freedom, practice what you preach.

Or get ready for an After-School Satan Club in your neighborhood.

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gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

history

School Directors Shouldn’t Double Down on PA’s Keystone Exam Circus

Top 4 Things McKeesport Area School Directors Need to do to Extinguish the District Dumpster Fire

4) Pass a Code of Conduct for Board Members and Administrators

3) Start Streaming Council Meetings Again

2) Hire a New Reputable Business Manager

1 ) Pass a Teachers Contract with No Tax Increase

Where Have School Libraries Gone?

Will PA Finally Hold Cyber Charter Schools Accountable?

Teaching Blind Obedience is Child Abuse

Efforts to Legalize Child Labor are the Next Logical Step After Corporate Education Reform

12) Standardized Tests Hurt Asian-American Students, Too, Though Many Get High Scores

11) Fact Checking Propel Charter Schools – Do They Live Up to Their Own Hype?

10) Stay Woke, Public School Teachers

9) Where Have School Libraries Gone?

8) After School Satan Clubs Are Teaching Public School Districts an Important Lesson in Free Speech

7) Congress May Raise Educators’ Minimum Salaries to Combat the Teacher Exodus

6) I am a Charter School Abolitionist, and You Should Be, Too

5) A Private Equity Firm, The Makers of the MAP Test, and an Ed Tech Publisher Join Forces

4) Top 4 Things McKeesport Area School Directors Need to do to Extinguish the District Dumpster Fire

3) Teach for America Promised to Fix the Teacher Exodus Before Anyone Even Noticed There Was One. Now It’s Choking on Its Own Failure

2) Come Visit Your Wasted Tax Dollars at Commonwealth Charter Academy’s Waterfront Luxury Office Space

1) McKeesport Teachers Without a Contract Because of Bad Business Manager or Bad Faith School Board?

Gadfly’s Other Year End Round Ups

2022:

2021:

2020:

2019:

2018:

2017:

2016

2015

2014

4) Pass a Code of Conduct for Board Members and Administrators

3) Start Streaming Council Meetings Again

2) Hire a New Reputable Business Manager

1 ) Pass a Teachers Contract with No Tax Increase