Teachers Persist in Fight Against Anti-Tax Ideologues in All-Red States

If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we’ve got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship.
– Barack Obama

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Bryce Covert’s new piece in The Nation, Will Red-State Protests Spark Electoral Change?, is a must read.  The focus is Oklahoma, a state where, until this spring, taxes had not risen since 1990 and where the legislature cannot pass a tax increase of any kind without a three-fourths supermajority.

Covert introduces us to Scott Helton, a high school English teacher whose school opted to save money with online textbooks instead of buying the printed copies. But the school hasn’t enough computers and its Wi-Fi is inadequate. He has been forced to spend his own money to provide readings for his students. Ten years ago, his classes averaged 20 students; today they are packed with 35, and in once case 40 students, many of whom sit on the floor. We also learn about underpaid workers in other government agencies including Gail DeLashaw, a family-support worker in the Department of…

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Trump Administration’s Rule Change on Affirmative Action Will Solidify Segregation in K-12 Public Schools

Perhaps what is most troubling about Betsy DeVos becoming Secretary of Education is her “Kingdom calling” which is that belief that the public schools ought best to be used to help usher in the Kingdom of God. And I’m not at all alone in being concerned about using the Bible to “prove and promote social mores and establish the law of the land.
“When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.
I was taught that women were by nature inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.
I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.”
– Rev. John Shelby “Jack” Spong retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church. From 1979 to 2000 he was Bishop of Newark. He is a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author.

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It seems unlikely that last week’s action by the Trump Justice Department—to rescind rules on affirmative action implemented by the Obama administration—will materially affect local school districts’ capacity to integrate K-12 schools by race. Although in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared, “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.  Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” a 2007 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts had already caused school districts to step significantly back from a commitment to racial integration in elementary and secondary schools.

Roberts’ decision in the 2007 case, Parents Involved, banned the use of race as a factor to be explicitly considered in school assignment plans unless, of course, the school district remained under court order to remedy government-imposed de jure segregation (purposely maintaining separate schools for black and white children). Now, 60 years after Brown…

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