The DSA plan for NYC schools
As bad as the public school system in New York City already is, there are plans to make it worse. And I’ll reiterate that, although you may not care about NYC, as these ascendant leftists get more power it will be the plan elsewhere.
The article describes a meeting of radical DSA educators in New York City, mostly connected with CUNY (The City University of New York):
“We need to overhaul the curriculum in a class consciousness frame. . . . The curriculum as a whole needs to be relooked at, revisioned and reframed,” the CUNY Kingsborough Community College professor [Maureen Fadem] said.
The meeting, titled “Planning for Socialist School Governance,” was led by NYC DSA Labor Working Group co-chair Nina Bruckenthal, a math teacher at NEST+m, a public science-oriented K-12 school on the Lower East Side, and Amanda Vender, an ESL teacher at the International High School of Sciences in Elmhurst, Queens. …
The DSA educators vowed to use their connections to fellow socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani to get their agenda through, and also conspired to use upcoming contract negotiations to realize their far-left goals. …
The UFT contract for Gotham teachers is set to expire Nov. 28, 2027 and the DSA has progressively been strengthening its grip on the union.
An especially chilling portion of the article quotes one of the teachers acknowledging that the idea of indoctrinating children in this way isn’t popular with the public. The solution? To further oppose school choice and charter schools and make such schools even more difficult to access. The New York City public school system is already shunned by parents who can afford to do so and to send their children to private or parochial schools. But for those less affluent, there is at least the possibility of securing a place for their children in charter schools. The rest – about 75% of the children in NYC – are in the public school system, and the statistics look like this:
In 2024-25, there were 906,248 students in the NYC school system, the largest school district in the United States. Of those students:
16.8 percent of students were English Language Learners
22.4 percent were students with disabilities
75.3 percent were economically disadvantaged
Race or ethnicity:
42.3 percent Hispanic
19.3 percent Black
18.7 percent Asian and Pacific Islander
16.1 percent White
2.0 percent Multi-Racial
1.2 percent Native American
Note the large number of students whose native language is not English and who need extra help with English (“English Language Learners”), the large number who are coded with disabilities, and the absolutely enormous number who are considered “economically disadvantaged.” The latter designation means the child is getting some sort of welfare and/or is in foster care. Note also that white students are among the smallest ethnic groups in the system.
Therefore it’s quite clear that, if these DSA teachers get their way, they’ll be ramming this far-left propaganda down the throats of the children who are very much in need of basic instruction in traditional school subjects, and who have little access to alternatives to the regular public schools. These children will be used as guinea pigs by teachers who could not care less what the children or their families actually need or actually want.
K-12 The Final Reform
Instead of pouring money from a variety of sources into local monopolies and hoping for good results, the ideal system would be funded by a simple Educational Endowment bestowed on each individual student.
Provision of educational services should look like what the demonopolized telecommunications industry has become, large intensively competitive high tech providers. These providers would be competing to offer educational services that worked, and that parents and students wanted
This ideal system would protect its users from poor teaching performance. If a student failed to exhibit minimum educational achievement, payment would not be made. Instead, it would accrue in the student account, providing twice the amount the next year to the provider who could catch the student up.
Seriously underperforming students would accrue several years of catch-up funding, providing extra incentive for the type of personalized attention that would benefit them. Military veteran servicemen and women teaching small groups of students, developing personal relationships, can change lost kids into enthusiastic young adults.
The funds would remain in the student account indefinitely, allowing dropouts to get an education as age and experience created the desire. The endowment would also provide funding for prison schooling, attracting providers who would adapt to the requirements.
Home schoolers whose students exhibited the required achievement would be paid.
Special needs students would still receive extra funding but at an individual level.
Opening educational services to the free market would allow for practical job-related instruction, and college level courses, to be included as providers fought for market share.
Competition among educational providers would make full use of technology, would provide useful training for actual jobs, and would deliver far more education for the same money. Gamification would keep students involved in ways that existing K-12 material can’t touch. The use of AI would allow the tracking of each bit of knowledge and understanding to be monitored at the individual student level and presented in various ways until understood.
The late 1970’s in the United States was a time of surprising deregulation. It was the beginning of the end for the telephone monopolies. Those inside the regulated industries, and the regulatory agencies, warned of doom and disaster if competition were allowed. The doomsayers were wrong. The free market provided solutions that were impossible to forecast. Competition and the profit motive brought out the best that humans can create.
Communications solutions today are employing far more people than the old phone monopolies, and are delivering services never dreamed of in that era. The forecasts of disastrous unemployment and system collapse if the phone monopolies were opened to competition were totally and completely wrong.
K-12 is the phone monopoly of our time.
Banning labor unions from all public sector employment (inclusive, whether local, state or federal) would make a good start to curbing these malefic anti-social, anti-American actors and their interests.
DSA brings more and better learing to NYC.
Progress, comrades!
Darkness is descending.
@Richard Ilyes: the ideal system would be funded by a simple Educational Endowment bestowed on each individual student.
Maybe; Federal student aid already works this way. But the point of the educational system is not really to educate students, it’s a jobs program. Every so often my school district sends me a little glossy magazine detailing all its wonderful accomplishments and it is eye-opening to see how many people who work for the school district have nothing to do with instruction.
It is also eye-opening to see the district calendar and how many fewer days of instruction there are.
Not to mention this chart of inflation-adjusted per student K-12 spending.
For those who don’t click links it more than doubled from 1980 to 2024 after adjusting for inflation. The national average of course won’t tell the whole story, some districts use that money well, some have good reasons for being more expensive.
In my neck of the woods the K-12 schools have been getting automatic increases for years simply because our home prices and consequently our property taxes are going up (even if the rate doesn’t change). They are accustomed to spending that money whether or not they have a real need. That’s a poor funding mechanism.
So much of the dysfunction of unionized public schools is old news, although neo’s headline of the DSA involvement and direct promotion of socialism is a new and awful wrinkle.
The old paradigm always was “We’ve got a new & improved teaching methodology!” Whole English, or new math, etc. Yeah, sure. Politicians say, “We want change!” For the better, or for the worse?? Change, in and of itself, is a stupid slogan, IMO. The history of the teacher’s union on this topic would suggest that their intent is to degrade or damage the educational experience for children. They can’t claim ignorance of these outcomes forever, but then they move on to something else.
75% of kids are economically disadvantaged? This likely comes from the old scam where the schools work vigorously to put as many children on free school lunch programs as possible. There is supposed to be a financial need based checks on that system that are easily skirted.
A big motivation for swelling the free lunch rolls is that it also forms the needs basis for many other money handout programs. These programs don’t check for financial need because they are pulling names from the free lunch rolls. We already checked… maybe. Hey, it’s government money. Who cares?
…indoctrinating children in this way isn’t popular with the public. The solution? To further oppose school choice and charter schools and make such schools even more difficult to access.
I probably posted something about this here 10+ years ago, but there is a fascinating documentary called The Lottery (2010). I’ll try to cover a few highlights from it quickly:
1) The topic is a charter school (Harlem Success Academy maybe?) created by Eva Moskowitz, and the lottery system used to limit the otherwise flood of students out of the unionized schools.
2) Either in an interview with the filmmaker, or at the beginning of the film, she talks about being on the street filming for another purpose when she encounters a large group of union protestors. She interviews a few of the protestors asking them, “What are you protesting?” Answer: “We don’t know. We’re paid to be here and carry these signs.” Astroturfing. (The signs say, “Ban charter schools!” or the like.) Subsequently, she uncovers the whole story.
3) The film follows 4 kids, their experiences with the lottery, and their experiences in the unionized schools and the Moskowitz school.
4) The filmmaker is a Sackler. Yes, the same wealthy Sackler family involved in the opioid pill epidemic. Sins of the father are not the sins of the child?
It’s instructive to think through, what would a minimal instruction budget look like? One teacher, something like 20 students, a room, and books. This is pretty much all that people had for instruction for hundreds of years.
Something like $200K per year should cover that easily, $10K per student. You could spend a lot on books and the teacher’s salary and benefits, even afford 900 square feet of commercial office space in a big city (Seattle’s average is about $40 / sq ft / year, $36,000 for 900 sq ft. Avg K-12 public teacher salary in Washington State is $111 K. Leaves you about $20K for textbooks and utilities after salary, benefits, and rent.)
That’s a little over half of what is spent today per student, for a smaller class size than is typical.
It follows that much of what public schools do is simply not instruction. I think we can all easily think of things public schools do that are not instruction.
In a way we can grateful the far Left increasingly says these things out loud.
This is the “problem of reproduction”. Nuclear families have an annoying habit of passing along their views and values to children. Which is where Gramsci enters the picture.
Those d-mn capitalists might have more children but we are going to intervene and make sure school cultivate critical consciousness. Oh and we need to restrict their options.
“Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself” Napoleon Bonaparte
Richard Illyes “K-12 The Final Reform”
This is a great idea, but who and how will bell the cat?
Many Republican states are passing so called school choice reforms. But the Democrats, controlled by the teachers unions, refuse to do it.
I am fortunate to have enough funds in my IRA that I can make substantial qualified charitable distributions instead of an RMD so I’m looking for charities that support school reform
Here are some charities I have run across.
Edchoice was founded by Milton Friedman to lobby for and support school choice movements in the states.
The homeschooling legal defense association HSLDA represents and supports homeschooling families that are being hassled by local education bureaucrats.
Moms for liberty fights it out to place conservative school board members. They have a charity called M4L foundation to train and support candidates.
I did grok searches for charities that help out families in states like Arizona that have many school choice option options available.
It would be good to donate to charities that provide scholarships for conservative private schools, but I don’t know how to evaluate the schools. Can anyone here suggest good conservative schools?
Does anyone here have other suggestions for charities to break the hold of left-wing ideology on schooling in America?
Bob Wilson, thank you very much for getting me thinking about
QCD vs. RMD vs. standard charitable giving.
Here’s a prompt for analyzing the tax implications of this.
Hi, AI! Please analyze tax strategy for a married couple (filing jointly) who do not itemize deductions. They live in the (state).
Financial Context:
Social Security: $W / month
Other Income: $X / month
Income Needs: Their Social Security and other income fully cover their living expenses and lifestyle.
Traditional IRA Balance: $Y (subject to Required Minimum Distributions (RMD) or Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCD), as both over age 73.)
Charitable Giving:$Z / year to qualified non-profits (currently paid out of cash flow/income)
Key Questions:
1. What are the federal (and potential state) tax implications of continuing to donate $Z/year from income/cash flow (while taking the required IRA RMD as taxable income) versus making a $Z/year QCD directly from the IRA?
2. Quantify the tax savings by evaluating the impact on Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), the taxability of their Social Security benefits, and their overall tax bracket.
3. Highlight any secondary tax or Medicare benefits (e.g., IRMAA thresholds, standard deduction impact).
4.. Please show the step-by-step math and summarize the total estimated savings in a clear comparison table.
Nota Bene: AIs are not tax accountants and can make mistakes.
(Prompt written by Google Gemini and me.)
AppleBetty
If you do not itemize, I think you will have a hard time beating taking a qualified charitable distribution as your donation instead of paying tax on the RMD and then making the donation to a charity.
QCDs go directly from your IRA to the charity without being taxed. They count against the RMD so they lower your taxable income and therefore the tax owed.
I am curious what the AIs answer is.
Hi, Bob Wilson. For my W, X, Y, Z numbers, Google Gemini found:
The couple’s taxable income sits squarely in the % federal tax bracket. Normally, deducting $Z charity at a % rate saves $(tax = Z x %). However, the QCD delivers a double benefit due to how Social Security benefits are taxed:
Direct Reduction: $Z charity is excluded from gross IRA income, i.e., the RMD.
Social Security Phase-In Reduction: Social Security taxability depends on “Provisional Income” (Other Income + 50% of Social Security). In their income range, every $1.00 reduction in IRA income removes $0.__ of Social Security from being taxed.
(I think “other income” is what I called other income above, plus RMD.)
Combined AGI Reduction: Reducing IRA income by $Z charity reduces taxable Social Security by $__, dropping their total AGI by $__.
Final Tax Benefit: $__ × % marginal tax rate = $__ in savings.
(For us, the savings was about twice what was calc’d for:
“Normally, deducting $Z charity at a % rate saves $(tax = Z x %).” )
Nota Bene: AIs are not tax accountants and can make mistakes.
But, this tells me that I should pay a real tax accountant to get the real numbers.
I don’t care very much what happens to NYC, and I do care what happens elsewhere in the country, but it seems to me that we should be caring less about the DSA’s plans and more about who is funding them, and in front of that, we should be caring about changing the way these voters think, the ones who are susceptible to endorsing such incredibly stupid and self-destructive thinking. What makes them tick? How is it so difficult for them to value an ideology when it has such a proven bad track record?
“the CUNY Kingsborough Community College professor [Maureen Fadem] said.”
The exposure of USAID has removed tax dollars from NGOs inimical to the USA.
It’s well.past time to figure out how to keep tax dollars from subsidizing socialist propaganda in the guise of pronouncements (and probably courses) from a public school “professor”.
I have no problem with her doing what she’s doing as long as she doesn’t do it while being paid and claiming the auspices of a tax-supported school. Go do.your thing at Reed College, they’ll love you.
Remember, QCD’s start at age 70.5 years; while RMD’s start at 73 years [and both thresholds may be adjusted for extensions in life spans in future years (as was done for RMDs in 2022)]. Plus now the max QCD is being indexed to inflation, or $111K for 2026 [thank goodness!!].
But you can make IRA distributions prior to age 73 and cover them via a QCD also. Clearly the goal is to achive your selected charitable benefits and to lower your AGI [prior to taking std or itemized deductions].
Thus, depending on your circumstances, your RMD may be greater or less than the allowed QCD. If RMD>QCD then you still owe taxes on the residual RMD amount. If RMD<QCD then you have the opportunity for additional reductions in your AGI. [The SS payout reductions for Medicare and IRRMA premiums are based on your income/AGI/MAGI from two years ago, so lowering your AGI now might have tax (or fee reduction) benefits two years from now. ]
AppleBetty, I am a little confused by your comments on SS:
"Social Security Phase-In Reduction: Social Security taxability depends on “Provisional Income” (Other Income + 50% of Social Security). In their income range, every $1.00 reduction in IRA income removes $0.__ of Social Security from being taxed."
I forget the threshold factors for when SS recipients must pay the full regular rate on up to 85% of their SS income [in addition to Medicare and maybe IRRMA premiums], but I thought it was in the range of $44K. I presume you were exploring a means of calculating the most general case?
And my income is high enough to not see that benefit?
@Bob Wison: "Does anyone here have other suggestions for charities to break the hold of left-wing ideology on schooling in America?"
I would suggest you also consider donations to Hillsdale College, as they have programs to set up K-12 schools across the country, basically as charter schools.
Another organization dedicated to helping parents and advocates for reforming education in their local and state level communities is Defending Education: https://defendinged.org
The linked web page details their scope, etc.
I am not a tax accountant or attorney, so take all of the above with the applicable legal caveats. 🙂
Pushing for competition in K-12 has been a project of mine for some time.
Most interest is among Home Schoolers. A typical response is the following, and my response follows.
Does your plan have any kind of certification process for educational companies, and, if so, who runs it. Is it the government? If so, what prevents them from establishing a new educational dictatorship by laying down certain regulations for the educational companies?
Or, if there’s no certification process, we wonder how parents might be prevented from simply pocketing their children’s educational fund by paying it to an “educator” such as, for instance, their next door neighbors.
Here is my response:
Political involvement in education is unavoidable. Groups trying to control a narrative will always be trying to control education in any way they can. Putting parents in control of spending with the money following the child is the proper reaction to this. However, current choice proposals leave untold thousands in terrible schools.
I favor no control or certification of providers. Let the customers choose what is provided. Let the results speak for themselves.
A very important element is accrual when minimal achievement does not occur, providing twice the amount for the next year and attracting providers who will catch the student up.
Those attempting to control a narrative will be demanding state control of education no matter how it is paid for, and will be demanding that choice money be spent in ways that let them have control. The endowment approach creates a large group who now will have the means to see what is happening and oppose indoctrination.
That brings up what the achievement tests are. There are numerous tests now that measure grade level achievement. Every state has them as part of tracking school performance. Those tests will be the starting method, with tests currently being offered to home schoolers used as well. The states already control their tests, but competition will bring things into the open in ways that are not being done now. The endowment idea will create competition, reduce costs of tests, and most home school parents will probably be using several throughout the year to see how their kids are doing. Other educational providers will also be testing and using the results to publicize their offerings. A pressure for openness and avoidance of indoctrination will exist that is not present now/
The current push for choice helps a lot of kids, but leaves untold thousands in terrible schools. Those kids are now mostly in poverty stricken and high crime areas. The endowment approach turns them into customers and insures that they at least are educated to minimum standards, which is not happening now. The requirement for minimal achievement before payout opens the provision of educational services to the free market for every student in a meaningful way. Providers will be fighting attempts to control them.
This system also frees schools from taking trouble makers and those who refuse to apply themselves, resulting in much more orderly schools. Troublesome students will be handled by providers specializing in them, in many cases when they have reached a greater level of maturity.
There will absolutely be endless attempts to game the system and keep the money. It will become part of the culture and will probably have its own publications and websites Activists and opportunists of all stripes will be drawn to it like flies to honey. However, a level of transparency will exist that is totally absent in the schools that most of those students are now attending. And, students will have to demonstrate minimal achievement for payout to occur. The fact that parents keep a lot of the money is not really a problem if the kids wind up educated. The students will have achieved a minimal level which is not happening now. At least those parents will be getting in on the payouts, not just the local Democrat insiders, and the kids themselves will be demanding good educational experiences.
One of the things that radicalized me about this problem was an experience with a black tow truck driver. Years ago I was in the Cold War Army in Germany. It was the era of the draft, and my platoon had a bunch of black guys from inner city Detroit. With no English language TV the pastime was reading paperback novels. They were passed around endlessly and it was common to see everyone on his bunk with his head propped up reading. All the black guys read effortlessly. Their schools in the pre-union era were adequate to instill effortless reading.
Some time ago I needed a tow and a black guy was driving the truck. He was a solid guy like the guys in my platoon, a twenty something wearing a wedding ring. As we rode to the repair place he said he had graduated from one of the inner city high schools. When we got to the destination he asked me to help him fill out the paperwork, and as we worked through it I realized that he struggled to read. This is ridiculous. Here is a person who will never be able to read effortlessly because of the terrible schools he was forced to attend.
As I have worked to publicize this idea I attracted the support of a black Democrat activist about my age. He reads effortlessly, but his grandkids struggle to read at all.
Competition is the only answer. We once had thousands of local phone monopolies, their day is gone. Our untold thousands of local educational monopolies need to meet the same fate.
They want to tear it all down and then replace it with (insert utopian plan here).
We seem to be living in a science fiction parallel universe – those who can see and hear what evil is vs those who cannot or will not. They aren’t pushing “socialism”, they are pushing tyranny. Period.
R2L, thanks for the comment. Short answer: I don’t know the answer, but thanks to Bob and Gemini and you, I have a good question for my tax accountant: Should I be paying charitable contributions via QCD? (I’m not yet 70.5 or 73, so I’ll put it on my calendar.)
Another thing that caught my attention is the CUNY connection. I have noticed how often CUNY is mentioned in various news articles about left wing craziness in higher education.
AppleBetty, the 2017 tax law changes pushed by Trump and the R’s did away with the exemptions and increased the std deduction levels to such a high value that many people were better off using the std deduction rather than itemizing.
Unless you had medical expenses exceeding 7.5% of your AGI and/or really high property taxes in states like NY, etc., itemizing deductions was not attractive, but that also meant some people would look at their potential for charitible contributions and might decide they would stick with the std deduction and not add charitible contributions to their Sch A itemizations.
So only once you get the age aligned benefits of QCD extracts from your IRA’s do you start to reach possible income levels where charitible contributions again make sense (tax wise).
Presumably many people still make charitible contributions for their own purposes/desires, but don’t have the tax incentives that existed prior to 2017.
But by all means, explore options with your tax advisor on all of this, including any planning on taking distributions from your IRAs ahead of meeting the QCD or RMD age. I never did this trade off formally myself, but perhaps I would have had a somewhat better tax posture (on balance) if I had taken some of my gains earlier so the later income and tax bump up would have been lower. [Watch for the 59.5 age threshold to avoid 10% penalties, etc.] There are You Tube videos out there exploring some of these trade off options, too. Including if it is advisable to take or delay SS at age 62 or wait until 70, etc.
Since everyone’s situation is different, it is hard to say just what is best overall.
Vance hates uncle Miltie Friedman.
Ask him for a solution.
Yep (though I’d replace “tear it all down” with “destroy it all”…).
Related:
“…Six Months Post-Maduro, Venezuelan Recovery Defies Critics.
“It’s amazing what getting rid of the communism will do for you.”—
https://instapundit.com/814047/
R2L thanks for the suggestions of Hillsdale College and defending education. I will send them some donations.