School Choice II
- Thread starter 57Brave
- Start date
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/10/21/chicago-schools-covid-money-crisis/
Thousands of people have been hired at the Chicago Public Schools over the past few years, fueled by $2.8 billion in federal covid relief funding. Now the money is gone, but no one wants to reduce the workforce, and an ugly budget fight has plunged one of the nation’s largest districts into a financial and leadership crisis.
The new teachers, aides and school nurses, officials say, were desperately needed even before the pandemic extracted a severe toll on the city’s children. But no one in the district has a plan for how to keep paying them.
The mayor is pressuring the school system to consider a $300 million high-interest loan to cover short-term expenses, and he’s tried to oust the schools chief, who won’t go along. The teachers union is fighting any cuts while also pushing for new hires and big raises. This month, the school board resigned en masse rather than fire — or back up — the chief.
The schools want more money from the city. The city wants more money from the state. And the governor says Chicago shouldn’t expect a bailout.
…
Soon after the federal government approved a historic $190 billion in covid relief funds for schools, experts warned school districts across the country that it would be risky to use the one-time funding for ongoing expenses. Some districts opted to spend their money on discrete projects, such as improving facilities or contracts with tutoring companies. But others, including Chicago Public Schools, said the need for new staff was acute. For years, the system has been underfunded, and the district saw an opportunity to rectify that.
Chicago used its whopping $2.8 billion allocation, which it was required to spend by September 2024, to add nearly 8,000 positions to its workforce, budget documents show. A district spokeswoman said that includes about 2,000 new classroom teachers and more than 4,000 special education classroom aides, plus more nurses, counselors, social workers and other staff. Since 2020, every district budget has been pumped up with federal covid relief money — as much as $737 million last year.
…
The district has resisted even modest staff reductions, but also had no clear plan for how to maintain that payroll once the covid relief money was gone. It also has promised not to close any schools, although enrollment in the district has fallen significantly over the past two decades.
…
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher who is closely aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union, says he won’t tolerate cuts to the schools staff, which he refers to as laying off “Brown and Black women.” He also insists that the schools make the pension payment (which the district agreed to do a few years ago), even though the city is legally responsible for it.
In another racially charged statement, Johnson dismissed the “so-called fiscally responsible stewards” who have criticized his loan plan, comparing them to supporters of the Confederacy.
“The argument was you can’t free Black people because it would be too expensive,” the mayor said this month. “They said that it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate Black people. And now, you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system.”
—————
High comedy all around
Thousands of people have been hired at the Chicago Public Schools over the past few years, fueled by $2.8 billion in federal covid relief funding. Now the money is gone, but no one wants to reduce the workforce, and an ugly budget fight has plunged one of the nation’s largest districts into a financial and leadership crisis.
The new teachers, aides and school nurses, officials say, were desperately needed even before the pandemic extracted a severe toll on the city’s children. But no one in the district has a plan for how to keep paying them.
The mayor is pressuring the school system to consider a $300 million high-interest loan to cover short-term expenses, and he’s tried to oust the schools chief, who won’t go along. The teachers union is fighting any cuts while also pushing for new hires and big raises. This month, the school board resigned en masse rather than fire — or back up — the chief.
The schools want more money from the city. The city wants more money from the state. And the governor says Chicago shouldn’t expect a bailout.
…
Soon after the federal government approved a historic $190 billion in covid relief funds for schools, experts warned school districts across the country that it would be risky to use the one-time funding for ongoing expenses. Some districts opted to spend their money on discrete projects, such as improving facilities or contracts with tutoring companies. But others, including Chicago Public Schools, said the need for new staff was acute. For years, the system has been underfunded, and the district saw an opportunity to rectify that.
Chicago used its whopping $2.8 billion allocation, which it was required to spend by September 2024, to add nearly 8,000 positions to its workforce, budget documents show. A district spokeswoman said that includes about 2,000 new classroom teachers and more than 4,000 special education classroom aides, plus more nurses, counselors, social workers and other staff. Since 2020, every district budget has been pumped up with federal covid relief money — as much as $737 million last year.
…
The district has resisted even modest staff reductions, but also had no clear plan for how to maintain that payroll once the covid relief money was gone. It also has promised not to close any schools, although enrollment in the district has fallen significantly over the past two decades.
…
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher who is closely aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union, says he won’t tolerate cuts to the schools staff, which he refers to as laying off “Brown and Black women.” He also insists that the schools make the pension payment (which the district agreed to do a few years ago), even though the city is legally responsible for it.
In another racially charged statement, Johnson dismissed the “so-called fiscally responsible stewards” who have criticized his loan plan, comparing them to supporters of the Confederacy.
“The argument was you can’t free Black people because it would be too expensive,” the mayor said this month. “They said that it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate Black people. And now, you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system.”
—————
High comedy all around
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
I swear that reads like a parody. I bet the schools performance increased so much with all that extra staff.......
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-public-schools-staff-up-20-enrollment-down-10-5/
In 2019, there were 39,181 paid positions listed for Chicago Public Schools. By 2024, there were 46,967. That is an increase of almost 20% in five years with the growth in administrators, assistant principals, social workers and other support staff far outpacing the stagnant number of teachers.
All those extra workers on the payroll to educate 10.5% fewer students. Enrollment declined from 361,314 to 323,251.
…
The Chicago Teachers Union has continued to demand more staff despite the district enrolling fewer students. In its 2019 contract negotiations, the CTU bargained for more school counselors and social workers. In their current contract negotiations, the CTU seeks $1.7 billion to fill 4,650 additional positions for “climate champions,” gender support coordinators, librarians and more.
Despite declining enrollment, the annual CPS budget continues to increase. The fiscal year 2025 budget totals a record $9.9 billion, up $500 million from the prior year.
Since 2012, CPS spending has increased 97% while math and reading proficiency have declined by 78% and 63%.
—————
Woof.
Tapate50
Well-known member
Can't imagine having 2-3k non english speakers inserted into the school system does much for the class performance as a whole. I've read where the translators, and teachers spend all their time getting them up to speed if at all that the others are just going to school online instead.
sturg33
I
I'm genuinely dumbfounded that someone like 57 can be presented with this data and it not move the needle an inch on his stupidity
Tapate50
Well-known member
It is genuinely amazing stuff. We have so much government bureaucratic bloat right now its wild.
The thing that kills me about public education is stuff like this. Adding staffing to school administration and low wage support roles doesn’t address the issues in the classroom. Recruiting and hiring more good teachers and ensuring students have the tools they need is what impacts learning. I personally think you can do this through reform of the public school system, but something needs to change rather than *just* adding money at random.
acesfull86
Well-known member
[tw]1854033421405663539[/tw]
[tw]1854006535938015538[/tw]
[tw]1854006535938015538[/tw]
acesfull86
Well-known member
[tw]1854582207462940672[/tw]
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/texas-clinches-a-school-choice-majority-greg-abbott-children-education-f6486c73?mod=opinion_lead_pos2
Greg Abbott needed to win 76 seats out of 150 in the Texas House to enact his school-choice plan next year, and last week he did that and more. “Counting what I call only true, hard core school choice proponents, there are 79 votes in favor in the Texas House,” the Texas Gov. said last week.
Republicans won 88 total House seats, and some who aren’t “hard core” may support Mr. Abbott’s plan. The GOP state Senate improved its school-choice majority, too, with the victory of Adam Hinojosa over incumbent Democrat Morgan LaMantia. Texas is now poised this spring to pass its first private school choice program, and the nation’s largest, serving some five million students.
It’s a hard-fought win for Mr. Abbott, who made Republican opponents of his plan pay a political price. Twenty-one of them joined Democrats last fall to vote down his bill for scholarships worth about $10,000, plus billions in public-school funding. The Governor vowed to go after those who ran for re-election.
During the GOP primaries, Mr. Abbott endorsed 11 pro-school choice challengers. Eight won, and last week all eight were officially elected, along with other school-choice candidates the Governor backed in open races. One Republican incumbent who was ousted in his primary, Steve Allison in district 121, later endorsed the Democrat running for his seat in the general election. But Marc LaHood, the Republican backed by Mr. Abbott, won handily, 52.6% to 47.4%.
GOP school-choice proponents last week also flipped two Democratic House seats in open races. Denise Villalobos upset Solomon Ortiz Jr. by nearly 11 points in district 34, which leans left. Don McLaughlin Jr. beat Cecilia Castellano by 19 points in district 80.
—————
Well done, Abbott!
Greg Abbott needed to win 76 seats out of 150 in the Texas House to enact his school-choice plan next year, and last week he did that and more. “Counting what I call only true, hard core school choice proponents, there are 79 votes in favor in the Texas House,” the Texas Gov. said last week.
Republicans won 88 total House seats, and some who aren’t “hard core” may support Mr. Abbott’s plan. The GOP state Senate improved its school-choice majority, too, with the victory of Adam Hinojosa over incumbent Democrat Morgan LaMantia. Texas is now poised this spring to pass its first private school choice program, and the nation’s largest, serving some five million students.
It’s a hard-fought win for Mr. Abbott, who made Republican opponents of his plan pay a political price. Twenty-one of them joined Democrats last fall to vote down his bill for scholarships worth about $10,000, plus billions in public-school funding. The Governor vowed to go after those who ran for re-election.
During the GOP primaries, Mr. Abbott endorsed 11 pro-school choice challengers. Eight won, and last week all eight were officially elected, along with other school-choice candidates the Governor backed in open races. One Republican incumbent who was ousted in his primary, Steve Allison in district 121, later endorsed the Democrat running for his seat in the general election. But Marc LaHood, the Republican backed by Mr. Abbott, won handily, 52.6% to 47.4%.
GOP school-choice proponents last week also flipped two Democratic House seats in open races. Denise Villalobos upset Solomon Ortiz Jr. by nearly 11 points in district 34, which leans left. Don McLaughlin Jr. beat Cecilia Castellano by 19 points in district 80.
—————
Well done, Abbott!
57Brave
Well-known member
THINGS THAT HAPPENED
November 16, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Nov 16, 2024
One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states.
In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.
It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.
The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.
A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science.
But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition.
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.
After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”
The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values.
When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.
Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault.
In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies.
When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination.
After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.
When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”
During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.
But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars.
There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.
In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
November 16, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Nov 16, 2024
One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states.
In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.
It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.
The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.
A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science.
But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition.
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.
After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”
The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values.
When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.
Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault.
In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies.
When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination.
After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.
When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”
During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.
But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars.
There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.
In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
acesfull86
Well-known member
“No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
I agree 100% w/Tom ...and this is why we need school choice. Article ended in quite the self-own.
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://reason.com/2025/01/13/41-percent-of-chicago-teachers-were-chronically-absent-last-year-report-finds/
More than four in 10 public school teachers in Chicago were chronically absent last year, according to a new report released by the Illinois State Board of Education. Chronically absent teachers missed 10 or more days of school, including sick days and other personal leave, but not including most long-term leave, such as parental or medical leave, according to the report.
The problem isn't confined to Chicago. While 41 percent of Chicago teachers were chronically absent, 34 percent of teachers statewide were also chronically absent. According to a recent article in The 74, an education-focused news outlet, the problem is likely persistent across the country, though only a few states track this data.
More than four in 10 public school teachers in Chicago were chronically absent last year, according to a new report released by the Illinois State Board of Education. Chronically absent teachers missed 10 or more days of school, including sick days and other personal leave, but not including most long-term leave, such as parental or medical leave, according to the report.
The problem isn't confined to Chicago. While 41 percent of Chicago teachers were chronically absent, 34 percent of teachers statewide were also chronically absent. According to a recent article in The 74, an education-focused news outlet, the problem is likely persistent across the country, though only a few states track this data.
acesfull86
Well-known member
A happy National School Choice Week to those who celebrate. And 57.