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Texas Take Over of Public Schools Fails

The Troubling Trend of State Takeovers of Public Schools

Despite aiming to close achievement gaps, state takeovers of school districts worsen education inequality for low-income and minority students.

Blogging Our Great Divide

August 06, 2024

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by Georgia Jensen

 

The state takeover of Houston Independent School District, the eighth-largest public school system in the United States, is entering its second year. 

State-appointed superintendent Mike Miles is celebrating the occasion by touting state test score results that show preliminary improvement in student achievement. Other leaders in education across the country are paying close attention to Miles’ tactics to see if they’re effective enough to implement in their own schools.

Since 1989, over 100 school districts across the U.S. have been subjected to state takeovers, in which the state seizes control of low-performing or financially struggling school districts, replacing their locally elected school boards. This is done with the goal of dramatically improving the district’s academic or financial performance. State takeovers are difficult to neatly describe because they vary from place to place depending on the policies that the state-appointed board and superintendent decide to implement. But they are overwhelmingly ineffective.

A 2021 study done by researchers from Brown University and the University of Virginia analyzed over 100 state takeovers between 1989 and 2016. It found “no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits.” In fact, it can take years for schools to return to their previous levels of academic achievement after a takeover. 

 

Texas State Takeovers.

 

https://inequality.org/great-divide/the-troubling-trend-of-state-takeovers-of-public-schools/

 

  

Project 2025: The MAGA Plan to Take Your Freedom | Robert Reich

Sept 5, 2024 -Today in School

 

Celebration of Labor Day

As we celebrate Labor Day, 2024, there is some very good news. 

Bernie Sanders 

 

Public approval of labor unions, at 70%, is higher today than it has been in decades. Over the last year major unions like the UAW have won some highly publicized strikes, while many other unions have negotiated trail-blazing contracts for their members. Young people at Starbucks and on college campuses are now more involved in labor organizing than ever before. And, for the first time in American history, a president of the United States, Joe Biden, walked a picket line with striking workers.

It is not an accident as to why we are now seeing more militancy and growth in the labor movement. The working people of our country are increasingly aware of the unprecedented level of corporate greed and power we are now experiencing, and the outrageous level of income and wealth inequality that exists. They understand that never before in American history have so few had so much, while so many continue to struggle. And they are fighting back. They know that workers in unions can negotiate contracts that give them better wages, working conditions and benefits than non-union workers. They appreciate that when you’re in a union you have some power against the arbitrary decisions corporate bosses. 

Working people today are more than aware that, over the last 50 years, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. They are disgusted that, despite huge increases in worker productivity, real inflation-accounted for wages for the average American worker are lower now than they were over 50 years ago as 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They are insulted that CEOs of major corporations make almost 350 times as much as their average employee. They are concerned that the American dream is ending and that their kids may have an even lower standard of living than they do. And they worry that with the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence and robotics, they have no power as to what will happen to their jobs as the economy undergoes major transformations.

The average American worker also understands that his/her political power has been significantly diminished as billionaires pour huge amounts of money into both political parties as they undermine our democracy. It is no great secret as to who now has the clout in Congress. It is the billionaires, the corporate CEOs, the campaign donors and their well-connected lobbyists.

Purchase affordable magnetic Harris/Walz bumper stickers (2 for $5) and give them to other volunteers.

Purchase Harris/Walz window decals for car/home and give them to other volunteers. 

Georgia is in Play

 Georgia is back in play. Just over a month ago, Democrats had all but written it off. It’s now one of six major states that could go either way. 

Yesterday, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz kicked off their first post-convention campaign swing with a bus tour through rural southeast Georgia, culminating in a rally today in Savannah. 

Conventional wisdom holds that Democrats only win elections in the South with the help of voters in places like metropolitan Atlanta, who tend to be better-educated and more liberal. 

So why are Harris and Walz spending time in rural southeast Georgia? Because they need rural voters — especially Black voters who comprise about a quarter of the state’s rural population, to offset Trump’s potential win of white rural voters. 

It’s similar in North Carolina, whose urban-suburban “research triangle” has generated most Democratic voters over the last several election cycles but whose rural Black population could offset white rural Trumpers. Black voters comprise more than a third of the population in 17 North Carolina counties.

Trump continues to have a slight edge in recent Georgia state polling but that edge may be waning quickly. His antics in 2020 and 2022 cost Republicans a Senate seat or two, and he has only recently stopped feuding with the state’s popular governor, Brian Kemp. 

Harris and Walz’s rural bus tour signals they have several paths to winning 270 electoral votes, compared to the limited number that had been open to Biden, and compared to Trump-Vance. 

Since Harris and Walz are easily packing rallies in places like Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee — big, blue swing-state cities — it makes sense for them to gather votes in the rural South. It also signals to the Trump campaign — and to America — that Harris-Walz is a “unity” ticket appealing to a diverse America. 

Trump and Vance haven’t given up on Georgia. But if Vance’s awkward visit to a rural Georgia donut shop earlier this week is any indication (see clip, below), they don’t know what they’re doing there. 

Georgia may still be treacherous for Harris-Walz because of election rules recently green-lighted by three Trump-approved members of the Republican-controlled Georgia state election board. 

The new rules allow county election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into the accuracy of results before certifying them, and allow individual members of county election boards to “examine” election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.

“Reasonable inquiries” and “examinations” won’t necessarily cause certifications to run past the legal deadline — thereby allowing Republicans in Congress to question their legality and help push the election into the House. But Georgia’s new rules give officials license to hunt for election irregularities, and move certification past the deadlines. Since 2020, many Georgia county election officials have objected to certifying elections, including one county official as recently as March of this year.

On August 3, at a rally in Georgia, Trump congratulated the three Republican state election board members who came up with the new rules, calling them“pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

Fortunately, Democrats aren’t passively accepting this. On Monday, several Georgia election officials and the Democratic Party sued the Georgia State Election Board, claiming the new rules violate state and federal election laws. They’re asking the Fulton County Superior Court “to prevent chaos in November” by making clear — through a “declaratory judgment” — that the state deadlines for certifying the results are mandatory and the new rules don’t change that. 

Remember: Winning on November 5 is necessary but not sufficient. 

We must also maintain vigilance over who will be running the election machinery. Notify state and national levels of the Democratic Party of any serious potential irregularities so they can focus their small army of lawyers on them, as they’re doing in Georgia. 

Robert Reich,

From the Poor People's Campaign 

State                                         Margins                                                                                                                                                                                        Low income not voting

 

 

Arizona                                   10,000 votes                                                                                                                                                                                   840,000.  Did not vote.

 

Georgia                            12,000                                                                                                                                                                                                     746,000 did not vote

 

Wisconsin                   20,000                                                                                                                                                                                                               1 million did not vote.

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