The story about Iranian election interference is borderline laughable

It looks like a record voter turnout and that could signal a crushing defeat for Trump and his down-ticket Republicans. That is, if all the votes are counted and if millions of voters aren't denied access to the polls (a big IF, I know).

Take North Carolina for instance, where more people have now early-voted than the total number of people who voted for Donald Trump in North Carolina in 2016. Nationwide, nearly 50 million people have already voted, including at least 21.2 million in battleground states

Registered Democrats are outvoting Republicans by a large margin in states that report such data. So Trumpers are resting their hopes on a huge Election Day MAGA turnout. 

But with Election Day only 10 days away, we're seeing a barrage of disinformation from DT's camp about "widespread voter fraud" and "foreign interference" that could tamp down Election Day turnout. This despite evidence coming from FBI director, Christopher Wray that such fraud just doesn't exist. 

The Republicans aim to spread last-minute chaos and confusion like they did in 2016 with then-Director James Comey's last-minute "expose" of Hillary Clinton's emails. All this to discourage an anticipated huge voter turnout. They know that the larger the turnout, the more likely a Democratic sweep.

Watch as...

MSNBC's Hallie Jackson cuts short interview with Trump spox Hogan Gidley after he peddles conspiracies about widespread voter fraud and then deflects when asked if Trump has confidence in his FBI director.

"Nope, okay, I guess you're not gonna answer that question then..." pic.twitter.com/NjzJs83cRB

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) October 22, 2020

With the voter-fraud conspiracy theories now largely debunked, the next phase of the disinformation campaign points the finger at "foreign interference." Actually, this is coming from both camps with Democrats are pointing once again at Russia while Trumpers at Iran. I don't doubt that there are efforts by foreign intelligence agencies to influence the outcome, one way or the other. But it's doubtful that these attempts will bear fruit.

United States national security officials said that Iran and Russia had obtained American voter registration data, and that Iran had used the information to send threatening, faked emails to voters. -- New York Times

But the current wave of hysteria about Iranian interference is almost laughable. With DT threatening to fire Wray and Atty. Gen. Wm. Barr unless they do something big at the last minute to help turn the election, the best they could come up with was an alleged Iranian scheme to send threatening emails, supposedly from the Proud Boys, to potential Democratic voters, warning us not to vote, "or else."

John Ratcliffe 

So it was left up to John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, to sound the alarm. 

From NYT:

 ...spoofed emails, sent to Democratic voters, purported to be from pro-Trump far-right groups, including the Proud Boys. Iranian hackers tried to cover their tracks, intelligence and security officials said, first routing the emails through a compromised Saudi insurance company network. Later, they sent more than 1,500 emails using the website of an Estonian textbook company, according to an analysis by researchers at Proofpoint, a cybersecurity firm.

I mean, really? 1,500 emails? Anybody you know get one?

Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh but the thought of some Iranian hackers sitting in a room somewhere, thinking they could swing the election by trying to sound like American Proud Boys, and sending a tiny group of emails to us via Estonia, strikes me as funny. 

My take: If it's voting disinformation you're looking for, look no farther than the White House Communications Dept. 

Duncan keynotes Jeb Bush's ed reform conference

The sponsors tell the story

Arne Duncan has long been a favorite of the neocon wing of the Republican Party. He played a big role in pumping new life into a largely discredited Newt Gingrich when he made Gingrich the centerpiece of his road tour. He's revived Bush's No Child Left Behind and yesterday, with the 2012 elections looming on the horizon, Duncan the necromancer did his best to resuscitate the political corpse of Jeb Bush by keynoting the former Florida gov's 2-day so-called, National Summit on Education Reform in D.C.

According to WaPo's Valerie Strauss:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave the keynote speech today; the Republican Bush led a standing ovation for the Democratic Duncan, showing that school reform is, indeed, a bipartisan effort, if not a monolithic one.

The Orlando Sentinel's Mike Thomas writes:

Actually, this isn’t a shock. While Jeb has called President Obama a big spending liberal, and “childish” for blaming George W. Bush “for everything,” he has embraced much of Obama’s education agenda. That’s because much of Obama’s education agenda is derived from the Jeb Bush education agenda, which promotes school choice and accountability through testing.

Duncan joined a parade of Waiting For Superman types at the podium, including the nation's new chief teacher union-basher, New Jersey Gov. Christie. The conference and Bush/Duncan press conference appeared to be a love fest, with only slight cracks appearing over the issue of vouchers.

Both Duncan and Bush called for the next Congress to quickly reauthorize No Child Left Behind. Duncan said he wants NCLB tweaked a bit, but not overhauled. Neither is very likely since at the very same time, down the road a piece, all 42 Republican senators were signing a pledge not to allow ANY legislation to pass except tax cuts for the rich.

As Strauss points out: "What tells the story of the convention best is the list of convention sponsors." She's so right. The list resembles a convergence of the power philanthropists and hogs nudging their way in to the DOE feeding trough.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Broad Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation
Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation
IQity
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
McGraw Hill Education
WIN
Apex Learning
Cisco
Learnin3.com
Susan and Bill Oberndorf
The Foundation for Educational Choice
SMART
Barton Malow Design/Construction Services
Charter Schools USA

Bush's conference was also used as a springboard for the formation of a new "bipartisan" group of state school superintendents called, Chiefs for Change, headed by Louisiana Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek. The group, as you can imagine, is the embodiment of corporate reform and a new hammer against teacher unions.

Teacher miseducation at ASU

Is McCain the new dean?

ASU is "reforming" its teacher education program by putting less emphasis on pedagogy and more on subject matter. Is John McCain the new dean of ASU's College of Ed, or what?

A new curriculum will be tougher and will consist of more content courses, especially in mathematics. Education students must specialize in a content area, even if they are teaching in elementary school. "We're talking about having a course in probability and statistics that elementary teachers will have to have because that's what they use in elementary school," [the real dean, Mari] Koerner said. "So you can't be a teacher if you're math-phobic." (Arizona Republic).

More elementary teachers with a background in statistics and little knowledge about child development and learning theory. Isn't that special?

Another indication of ASU going with the conservative flow in teacher ed is their $18 million contract to study and model Teach for America's approach. Sounds like a win-win for both.

I actually like the ideas of teachers having a specialty and of placing students in classrooms while they are doing course work. But are these something new at ASU? How sad.

Tweets Ken Libby: "I bet David Berliner has some choice words for these upcoming changes to ASU's teacher program." ASU Regents Professor of Education, Berliner is co-author of The Manufactured Crisis and one of the biggest critics of the neo-conservative/privatization trends in public ed reform.

From outside the beltway

When Michele NcNeil called to interview me for Edweek's assessment of Arne Duncan's first year, I carefully jotted down some notes listing the main points I wanted to make. Michele said she wanted someone from "outside the beltway" to comment on Duncan. There's no one more outside the beltway than me these days--well, maybe Bill Ayers--which is just fine with me.

So when I read Michele's piece yesterday, and read my own quotes, I felt uncomfortable that she had me saying, "In some way, Duncan’s policies are worse than what we experienced over the last eight years."

It's not that I didn't say that or that I don't think it's true. But that kind of a statement, left hanging out there without any explanation, could easily be misinterpreted. So I wrote this clarification and tacked in onto the end of Michele's report:

I didn't think it was right of Ms. McNeil to leave my "in some ways worse than Bush" quote hanging out there without any examples or explanation. For the sake of clarity, I don't think the current regime is worse than the neo-cons or that Sec. Duncan is worse than Paige or Spellings. The fact that teachers and their union leadership is even at the table, represents a step up from the previous 8 years.

My point was that there are some things, some policies, which are even more destructive and more of a threat to the public aspect of public schooling. What is worse about current policies is the cynical way Duncan has used his power and the threat of withholding desperately-needed federal dollars in the midst of the current economic crisis, to coerce states and school districts into accepting his failed approach to reform (there's now important and overwhelming evidence of this failure coming out in the Chicago media).

This failed Chicago approach includes, as I pointed out to Michelle McNeil, massive school closings in inner-city neighborhoods, turning local public schools over to private management companies, single-minded emphasis on standardized tests and test-driven merit pay. On these policies he's outstripped even the previous administration.

I'm still hopeful however that the push-back we are now seeing in communities and by hundreds of school districts saying no to the Race-To-The-Top (an even worse metaphor for reform than No Child Left Behind), will force a rethinking and shift in these policies.

Michele was nice enough to respond with this note to me:

...on the Duncan profile. Sometimes in my attempt to cram a lot into a small space (tho I did get a fair amount of space, no doubt, for this piece) I don't do as good of a job as I could have in fully explaining people's thoughts. So I just wanted to drop you a quick note and thank you for further clarifying, and to let you know I appreciated your comments. I took note!

"Every picture tells a story, don't it"--Rod Stewart

Afterthoughts: 1) I think Michele McNeil is a really good journalist. 2) I think the picture atop Michele's article, showing Arne Duncan strolling in front of the Washington Monument with Dell CEO, Michael Dell, says a lot about how I really see Duncan's first year.

The view from right field

Are the neocons dead?

Have they folded up tent after their devastating loss in November? Uh uh, says Jacob Heilbrunn, writing in the Jan. issue of the American Conservative.

Heilbrunn wonders if, having destroyed the Republican Party, the neocon movement, which has its origins in the left, will re-emerge once again inside the Democratic Party? He speculates that they may have some "liberal interventionist" partners within the new State Department. He didn't, but well could have also suggested that they look for an open door through education reform with pro-voucher, privatization Democrats who are trying desperately to pull the new administration in their direction.


Bush and NCLB were too liberal for these conservative think-tankers

Hess from the American Enterprise Institute & Petrilli from the Fordham Foundation, accuse George Bush of selling-out the right-wing on NCLB. The very things that attracted some progressive educators to No Child, are the things H & P hated the most, ie. its equity language, talking about closing the racial " achievement gap" and its civil rights orientation (H & P call it "pie in the sky") write these Gingrich-ites, in the National Review Online.

The compromises that the administration struck, however, ultimately led Bush to champion a law that dramatically expanded the federal role in education; adopted an explicitly race-based conception of school accountability; focused on “closing achievement gaps” to the exclusion of all other objectives; proffered a pie-in-the-sky civil rights-oriented approach to school “accountability” (even for students with cognitive disabilities and English language learners); created a burdensome federal mandate around teacher qualifications that hampers outfits such as Teach For America; devised a compliance apparatus that is even more burdensome than the previous regime; and significantly increased federal spending on education.

'Radicals' vs. 'System defenders'

Weyrich's legacy



The neo-right wingers love to think of themselves as "radicals" or "reformers" while painting progressive educators and union members as "defenders of the status quo." I think they secretly fantasize about being SDS'ers back in the '60s. Right-wing loony, Paul Weyrich, the founder of the Heritage Foundation who died today, said it best:

"We are different from previous generations of conservatives…We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of this country."

What Weyrich meant of course, was that he and the neocons wanted to overturn major parts of the Constitution and current Civil Rights law, which he referred by the racist code-words, "political correctness." He also meant undermining popular elections and getting rid of public schools which he said, "no longer educate but instead 'condition' students with the attitudes demanded by political correctness.

Weyrich is gone, but his "radical" bloody banner is still being waved over at the right-wing think tanks. In his National Review essay published today, Fordham's Chester Finn, echoes Weyrich's pretzel logic, calling progressives and union members, "system defenders" because of our opposition to NCLB's testing madness and our support for more funding for public education.

Whereas Weyrich called on his followers to pull their kids out of public schools and do home-schooling, the semi-radical Finn wants to take a slower, more realistic route.

He knows it's hopeless to expect Obama and Duncan to salute Weyrich's banner and realizes that most of his conservative allies have been run out of Congress right behind Bush/Cheney, so their radicalism has no juice. So he offers the new leadership, a "third road" in between the radicals and system defenders. He calls this right-center coalition, reform realism.

The reform realists are now scared to death that Obama means business when he talks about a massive 21st Century New Deal program to rebuild schools and communities as well as early childhood education or when he says he will work collaboratively with teacher unions.

That's a plan much to radical for the reform realists.

Was the Annenberg Challenge a “total failure”?

Campaign of fear impacts school research

Here’s how badly the Ownership Society types have politicized school research and evaluation. Check out Andrew J. Coulson’s, “The Wreck of the Annenberg” at National Review. Coulson is a honcho at the Cato Institute. They’re the ones who invented the term Ownership Society and sold it to Bush to use as the banner hanging over his current global economic collapse. Too bad, he can’t pin that TOTAL FAILURE on me or Bill Ayers.

But Coulson does write off the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) as a “total failure” making Ayers and Obama the main culprits. He cites no evidence, no evaluations, no experts—nothing to confirm his “total failure” summary. While it’s true that Annenberg didn’t markedly raise Chicago’s test scores—no single reform effort ever does-- the very evaluation from the highly-respected Consortium on Chicago School Research, which Coulson refers to in his hatchet job on Annenberg, shows several positive gains for the CAC. Coulson chooses to ignore this side of the report for political expediency and ideological reasons. He writes:

It failed not just in Chicago, but around the country. The first problem was that many of the “model” schools and districts lacked results worthy of replication. The final report of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, for instance, noted that, overall, students in its model schools had learned no more than students in regular public schools.

To Coulson and the neocons, reform of any public institution is always a failed proposition. Why? Because they don’t believe public anything is reform-able. Secondly, as long as you don’t have to cite any real research, take into account any real goals or standards for the reform, or document anything you say, you can call anything a total failure and no one can really argue with you.

Coulson never explains exactly how Ayers/Obama caused this global total failure of Republican Walter Annenberg’s pet project, stuck as they both were, in Chicago. But that’s another matter.

For one thing, the CAC to its credit, never even called for replicating their “model schools.” That’s not what the initiative was about. The Chicago project was originally aimed at seeing how time, size and teacher isolation factored into school improvement. There was a small group of so-called Breakthrough Schools which were given extra resources and tried more focused and intensive reform efforts. But they were hardly models—more like experiments- and only a small part of the CAC initiative. And while this small group of Breakthrough Schools (not replicable models) didn’t immediately (in the one year they were measured) boost test scores, they did, according to the Consortium study, improve the “student learning climate” and lay the foundation for “subsequent development of instruction…” in those schools.

So how could Coulson read the very same study and conclude that Annenberg was a “total failure?” Answer? He couldn’t. He’s making the shit up.

Besides, Coulson isn’t really concerned with program evaluation. His case is ideological. Bill Ayers, ‘60s radical, was somehow involved with Annenberg. So was his terrorist-pal Obama. Ergo, the program was not only destined to become a “total failure” but was an omen of things to come when socialist Obama becomes president. His entire program for K-12 education will supposedly become a replication of this old, totally-failed Annenberg Challenge where the kids won’t learn any more stuff than they do in regular schools.

Isn’t this the same kind of counterfeit program evaluation we’ve been seeing for the past eight years coming out of the DOE, whether it be of the ideologically-bound Reading First program or of NCLB’s testing madness? The whole purpose of program evaluation is to help us draw lessons from various efforts to improve teaching and public education. But if you enter the process with the mindset that there’s really nothing to be learned and when you’re only goal is to discredit a political candidate, this is what you end up with.

Finally, why the deafening silence from CAC leaders themselves and from the researchers at the Consortium in the face of this assault on their own research? Is the fear campaign working?

It was Bill Kristol's idea

Whose brilliant idea was it to make Bill Ayers the focus of McCain's campaign during this disastrous stretch run for the Republicans? It was none other than neocon ideologue Bill Kristol. Heading into the last debate, he convinced McCain to talk about all the "unsavory characters" Obama's been palin' around with, rather than focusing on all this "economic stuff."

By unsavory, Kristol means leftists like Ayers and me, from back in the day. Ironically, Kristol, the "far right's loudest barking dog," is himself a "red-diaper" baby, the son of Trotskyite-turned-neocon, Irving Kristol. Irving was one of those from the far left who, at some point (like his son) decided that liberal was synonymous with commie and both deserved as big a dose of McCarthyite purging as possible.

McCain campaign, R.I.P.

OK Johnny, can you find Spain on this map?

It’s even worse than that. His foreign policy advisor Scheunemann (yes, the lobbyist who wants to go to war with Russia) says McCain wouldn’t agree to meet with Spain’s leader, Zapatero, our NATO ally, ON PURPOSE.

Name ends in a vowel. Must be some kind of terrorist.

From interview:

QUESTION: Okay... what about Europe I'm talking about the President of Spain?

MCCAIN: What about me what?

QUESTION: Okay... are you willing to meet with him if you are elected president?

MCCAIN: I am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for human rights, democracy and freedom, and I will stand up to those that do not.

Neocons turn on McCain/Palin

Look who’s taking pot shots at McCain/Palin. While Dems decide to use kid gloves on Palin, it’s neocons, George Will, David Brooks, Charles Krauthhammer, David Frum, and (OMG) Karl Rove, to name but a few, who are letting it be known, they don’t like the ticket very much.

“They were all keeping quiet,” says my Republican-insider friend Sid, “until it began to look like McCain actually had a chance to pull it out.” It was the Palin pick that really got them, says Sid. Pat Buchanan reminds us that “ Palin is no neocon” and the neocons either don’t trust her or consider her, “a blank slate.”

"Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend most of the year preparing him to fill in a few bubbles on a standardized test"

Obama in Ohio

In Ohio, Obama’s speech on education was a little fuzzy. In his appeal to the middle, he’s obviously trying to blur differences with Republicans. But he’s clearly anti-voucher and sharply critical of NCLB, testing madness and the past 8 years neo-con leadership. He's head and shoulders above McCain/Palin.

But I'll tell you what's wrong with No Child Left Behind: forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong. (Cheers, applause.) Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind is wrong. (Applause.) Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong. (Applause.)

And don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend most of the year preparing him to fill in a few bubbles on a standardized test. (Cheers, applause.) I don't want teachers to the -- teaching to the test. I don't want them uninspired and I don't want our students uninspired. (Applause.) So what I've said is we will measure and hold accountable performance, but let's help our teachers and our principals develop a curriculum and assessments that teach our kids to become not just good test-takers. We need assessments that can improve achievement by including the kinds of research and scientific investigation and problem-solving that our children will need to compete in a 21st century knowledge economy. And we have to make sure that subjects like art and music are not being crowded out of the curriculum. And that's what we will do when I'm president of the United States. (Cheers, applause.)

At the same time, he supports new small and charter schools and promotes innovation, not as something done TO TEACHERS, but BY THEM. He seems to be making an attempt to dislodge the conservatives who’ve grabbed the mantle of education “revolutionaries” and push progressives away from just circling the wagons and defending the status quo.

We need a new vision for a 21st century education -- one where we aren't just supporting existing schools, but spurring innovation; where we're not just investing more money, but demanding more reform; where parents take responsibility for their children's success -- (applause) -- where our schools and our government are accountable for results; where we're recruiting, retaining and rewarding an army of new teachers; and where students are excited to learn because they're attending schools of the future; where we expect all our children not only to graduate from high school, but to graduate college and get a good-paying job.

All in all, a good speech.

The Wrecking Crew

Thomas Frank’s new book, The Wrecking Crew: How conservatives rule, is well worth reading, even though it has little new to offer on the role of the neocons in public education, NCLB, testing or school reform. However it does affirm much of our general analysis of Ownership Society politics. He does offer the reader some cogent insights into conservative corporate/government sub-contracting and so-called “mismanagement," especially in Post-Katrina New Orleans, the current economic crisis, and reconstruction in Iraq. There’s also some good info on right-wing think tanks and foundations, for those like us who keep one eye on such things.

Frank also manages to pick up the same good William Bennett story that we did. It seems that when former FCC commissioner Reed Hunt asked Bennett for help in getting legislation passed to pay for internet access in every public school classroom, Bennett reportedly refused.

According to Hunt:

He told me he would not help because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capacity, new tools for success. He wanted them to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education.

Frank is a contributing editor at Harpers. You can hear his recent interview on Fresh Air, here.

Hated jaywalkers

Compassionate conservative Robert Novak ("The Prince of Darkness") always had a thing for jaywalkers. Here's a WaPo quote of his from 2001:

"I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don't run the country, all I can do is yell at 'em. The other option is to run 'em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that."

Novak took off in his Corvette yesterday, after hitting a homeless person, knocking him up onto the hood of his car. After police caught up with him, Novak claimed he never noticed hitting the victim.

"I didn't know I hit him," Novak said as he walked back to his Corvette. "I feel terrible. . . . [But] he's not dead, that's the main thing."