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  • Trump Wants Smithsonian to Downplay or Eliminate Dark Portrayal of Slavery

    Trump Wants Smithsonian to Downplay or Eliminate Dark Portrayal of Slavery


    Trump warned that he was prepared to take an active role in reviewing exhibits in the Smithsonian museums, especially the African-American Museum. Too many show bad portrayals of their nation, he complained. Think about it: is it possible to show slavery in a positive light?

    Trump’s insistence on purging the Smithsonian of the accurate portrayal of Black history is yet another example of his efforts to minimize and sanitize that history.

    The New York Times wrote that Trump is hostile to an honest confrontation with the past:

    Since taking office, Mr. Trump has led an effort to purge diversity, equity and inclusion policies from the federal government and threatened to investigate companies and schools that adopt such policies. He has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history, preferring to instead spotlight a sanitized, rosy depiction of America.

    The administration has worked to scrub or minimize government references to the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen, who fought in World War II, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. Mr. Trump commemorated Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery in the United States that became a federal holiday in 2021, by complaining that there were too many non-working holidays in America. He has called for the return of Confederate insignia and statues honoring those who fought to preserve slavery.

    And he has previously attacked the exhibits on race at the Smithsonian, which has traditionally operated as an independent institution that regards itself as outside the purview of the executive branch, as “divisive, race-centered ideology.”

    CNN described Trump’s determination to compel museums to remove exhibitions of events that show shameful behavior by whites and the government:

    President Donald Trump escalated his campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with his political directives on Tuesday, alleging museums were too focused on highlighting negative aspects of American history, including “how bad slavery was.”

    In a Truth Social post, Trump directed his attorneys to conduct a review of museums, comparing the effort to his crackdown on universities across the country.

    “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote.

    Trump’s comments come days after the White House announced an unprecedented, sweeping review of the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the nation’s major public museums. The initiative, a trio of top Trump aides wrote in a letter to Smithsonian Institution secretary Lonnie Bunch III last week, “aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”

    The letter said the review would focus on public-facing content, the curatorial process to understand how work is selected for exhibits, current and future exhibition planning, the use of existing materials and collections and guidelines for narrative standards.

    Bunch — who has served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution since 2019 and is the first African American to hold the position — has made multiple comments about the importance of educating people about slavery through the National Museum of African American History and Culture specifically. He told Smithsonian Magazine that part of the purpose of that museum “was to help a nation understand itself — an impossible task without the full recognition of the horrors of slavery.”

    Exhibits at the Smithsonian take years of planning and are heavily evaluated by teams of scholars and curatorial experts before they make their debut. Janet Marstine, a museum ethics expert, said that the demands laid out by the Trump administration “set the Smithsonian up for failure.”

    “Nobody could provide those kinds of materials in such a comprehensive way, in that short amount of time, and so it’s just an impossible task,” she said. The White House has asked the Smithsonian to provide a wide array of materials, from internal emails and memos to digital copies of all placards and gallery labels currently on display.

    The Smithsonian declined to comment on Trump’s latest remarks. A White House official, asked about the attorney review process Trump described, said the president “will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable.”

    Still, Trump’s efforts to target colleges and universities — which he is now comparing to his focus on Smithsonian museums — has been even more aggressive. His administration has moved to strip federal funding from higher education institutions for a variety of reasons, including allegations of antisemitism and failure to comply with certain policy changes. Columbia University recently settled with the Trump administration for more than $220 million dollars and Trump has also been in a protracted battle with Harvard University after his administration froze $2 billion in federal funding.

    The Trump administration’s push to align federal support with his cultural agenda has extended beyond the nation’s capital. The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities canceled tens of millions of dollars in federal grants earlier this year, affecting small museums, library initiatives, arts programs and academic research projects across the country.

    Trump has previously praised the Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which he toured during his first term as president.

    “I’m deeply proud that we now have a museum that honors the millions of African American men and women who built our national heritage, especially when it comes to faith, culture and the unbreakable American spirit,” Trump said during remarks at the museum in February 2017. Later that month, Trump said the museum “tells of the great struggle for freedom and equality that prevailed against the sins of slavery and the injustice of discrimination.”

    Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order that put Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, in charge of stopping government spending on exhibits that don’t align with the administration’s agenda. He also tasked a former member of his legal team, attorney Lindsey Halligan, with helping to root out “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian.

    “Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to divisive narratives,” the executive order said.

    The Smithsonian began a review of its own in June, and has repeatedly stressed its commitment to being nonpartisan. The institution told CNN in July that it was committed to an “unbiased presentation of facts and history” and that it would “make any necessary changes to ensure our content meets our standards.”

    The Smithsonian was established in the 1840s by the US with funds from the estate of James Smithson, a British scientist. As a unique trust instrumentality that is supported by federal funds, it is not an executive branch agency, which makes it a complex question whether the Trump administration has the ability to control its exhibits. It is governed by a 17-member Board of Regents led by Chief Justice John Roberts.

    The fact that the Smithsonian is not an “executive branch agency” won’t deter Trump. He has ignored laws and the Constitution when they don’t support his agenda. Neither the Library of Congress nor the National Portrait Gallery is an executive agency. Yet Congress sat silently as Trump forced out their leaders.

    Trump is rapidly assuming control of every federal agency that was designed to be independent.

    No other President has attempted to do that.



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  • SCOTUS Gives Trump Permission to Eliminate Department of Education

    SCOTUS Gives Trump Permission to Eliminate Department of Education


    After the election, I confidently predicted that Trump would never be able to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education. To eliminate a Department required Congressional approval, and I was confident that Trump would never get that. He would need 60 votes, not 51, and he would never get them. There might even be Republicans voting to keep the Department.

    But I was wrong. Obviously. It didn’t occur to me that Trump would fire half the staff of the Department and dismantle it without seeking Congressional approval.

    Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the President could continue to lay off the employees of the Department of Education while leaving aside the legal question of his power to destroy a Department created by Congress 45 years ago. Its ruling allowed him to achieve his goal without consulting Congress or abiding by the Constitution.

    Because he wanted to. And because Congress–if asked– would stop him. And because six members of the Court wanted to help him achieve his goal.

    Lower courts told him to reinstate those who were fired without cause. Federal Appeals courts agreed with the lower courts. The Supreme Court reversed them and gave Trump what he wanted.

    The Republicans in Congress watched supinely, conceding another of their Constitutuinal powers. They had already abandoned their power of the purse. Trump might as well abolish Congress. He doesn’t need their approval. They have disemboweled themselves, with the approval of the Supreme Court.

    The Supreme Court majority are extremists. They occasionally hold up a fig leaf and claim to be “originalists” or “textualists,” interpreting the Constitution as it was written. We now see that they are originalists when it suits them, but not originalists when Trump asks them to expand his imperial powers.

    The Founders thought they had created a system of checks and balances, where no single branch could control the other two. Trump is the conniving scoundrel that they warned about in the Federalist Papers.

    Republicans were not always hostile to the Department of Education. Reagan wanted to abolish it right away, but instead reaped the rewards of a 1983 report called “A Nation at Risk,” which excoriated the nation’s public schools and undermined the public’s faith in them.

    Reagan’s successor, his Vice-President George H.W. Bush, did not try to abolish the Department of Education. Instead, he decided to use it to burnish his credentials. After first appointing a little-known president from Texas as Secretary of Education, Lauro Cavazos, President Bush decided that he wanted to be known as “the Education President.” He appointed Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander as Secretary and convened a gathering of the nation’s governors to set national goals. (Secretary Alexander selected me to become Assistant Secretary in charge of the Department’s research arm).

    There was no talk of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education during the term of Bush 1.

    When George W. Bush became President in 2000, he never sought to close down the Department. His first piece of legislation was called No Child Left Behind, and he expected the Department to help him build his claim to be “a compassionate conservative.”

    Again, no talk of abolishing the Department during the eight years of Bush 2.

    When Trump was elected in 2016, abolishing the Department was not on his agenda. He appointed billionaire Betsy DeVos as Secretary, and her goal was to use the Department to fund charters and vouchers. She shoveled nearly $2 billion into the creation and expansion of charters but got nowhere with a federal voucher plan.

    And then came Trump’s second term, where he allied himself with the most extreme elements of the Far Right. They were there during Trump 1, but in his second term, the extremists are in charge. By extremists, I mean not only the anti-government billionaires like Peter Thiel, but the entrenched rightwing zealots of what used to be called the John Birch Society. When Trump denounces Democrats as “Communists,” “radical leftwing lunatics,” and other bile, I feel as if I’m time-traveling back to the McCarthy era, when unhinged rightwingers flung such insults at their political opponents.

    With the Supreme Court’s approval, Linda MacMahon will resume firing employees of the Departnent of Education and sending its core programs to other departments.

    If the Supreme Court ever gets around to deciding whether Trump has the legal authority to abolish the Department of Education, it will already be gone.



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  • Time to eliminate high-stakes tests for prospective California teachers

    Time to eliminate high-stakes tests for prospective California teachers


    A sixth grade math teacher helps two students during a lesson about math and music.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Becoming a public school teacher is a calling. It’s incredible to see students learn and grow and achieve their dreams. Many see this as a rewarding career and want to pursue it, which raises the question — why would anyone be in favor of unnecessary hurdles for these aspiring educators?

    In my work as an educator, with more than 30 years in the classroom and as vice president of the California Teachers Association (CTA), I’ve seen firsthand and heard from educators up and down the state about the deeply problematic Teaching Performance Assessments (TPAs). These assessments were enacted to measure the teaching performance of prospective teachers.  

    There is no shortage of horror stories about the TPAs. We hear from talented teachers constantly that they are long and time-consuming. They are full of low-value tasks, and they come at a very busy time for new educators. They do not prepare teachers for the classroom and detract from programs with proven success.

    Aspiring teachers can better learn the teaching craft in the real world. Vital preparation for new educators includes working with mentors to improve their instruction, having time to concentrate on developing quality lesson plans, and learning how to apply knowledge gained from a credential program in real classrooms. These programs consistently assess student teachers. They ensure we meet California’s high teaching standards.

    The TPAs also keep talented educators out of the profession of public education. This is especially true for Black, Indigenous and people of color working to become teachers. Educators of color have raised concerns about biases undermining their success at passing the TPAs. Moreover, aspiring teachers must pay $300 out-of-pocket to take these assessments. After spending thousands of dollars on a degree, one can see how this costly assessment becomes an impossible hurdle for too many. 

    This is why CTA is sponsoring Senate Bill 1263 to eliminate the TPAs, alongside Sen. Josh Newman.

    Two years ago, I began leading a CTA work group with educators from across the state. We met to study the teacher shortage. We aimed to find ways to ease the problem and increase teacher diversity. Our group determined that these assessments hurt teacher training. They harm our new teacher pipeline and hinder efforts to diversify public education careers.

    We compiled this data and analysis from educators and practitioners, including a survey of educators. We took this information to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) and noted the disproportionate impact on educator candidates (see page 33). This issue was first raised three years ago by the California Alliance of Researchers for Equity in Education when the group asked the commission to end high-stakes testing in teacher education, citing concerns with “validity, reliability, fairness and bias.”

    At the meeting, Commissioner Christopher Davis underscored the TPA’s “disproportionate harm” to teaching candidates from diverse backgrounds: “We continue to struggle with the reality that our state, through these examinations, is systematically discriminating against the very diversity it alleges it wants to track into our workforce.”

    In December, the commission heard our call, adopting a secondary passing standard in the event an educator did not complete the TPA requirement. This allows teacher candidates who met all other credential requirements a path to a credential if they demonstrate Teacher Performance Expectations (TPE) through classroom observations, course projects and similar avenues.

    This is a step in the right direction. More than 1,500 aspiring California educators who did not pass the TPA would have met the secondary standard in 2022-23, meaning they would be spared the cost and extreme stress of retaking the TPA.

    Our work continues. As Sen. Newman said, the issue is simple: “One key to improving the educator pipeline is removing barriers that may be dissuading otherwise talented and qualified prospective people from pursuing a career as an educator.”

    We must end the unnecessary TPA and evolve our state system of educator preparation to better equip teachers to bridge California’s diverse students to bright futures. This is becoming a national standard. Other states including New York, New Jersey, Georgia and even Texas have already eliminated the TPA requirement. It’s time for California to take this step forward and improve the path for aspiring educators on their way to the classroom.

    ●●●

    Leslie Littman is vice president of the California Teachers Association. She previously taught AP U.S. history, economics and government at Hart High School in the William S. Hart Union School District in Santa Clarita.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Pressure from education advocates ends effort to eliminate teacher assessment

    Pressure from education advocates ends effort to eliminate teacher assessment


    Senate Bill 1263 will be heard by the full Assembly if it makes it through the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

    Credit: AP Photo/Terry Chea

    A controversial bill that would have eliminated teaching performance assessments — the last licensure test California teacher candidates are required to take — has been dramatically revised under pressure from education advocacy groups.

    Senate Bill 1263, sponsored by the California Teachers Association (CTA), would have ended the requirement that teacher candidates take video clips of classroom instruction, submit lesson plans, student work and written reflections on their practice to prove they are prepared to become teachers.

    In mid-June, the bill was amended to retain the teaching performance assessments, with a provision that the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing convene a working group of teachers, college education faculty and performance assessment experts to review the assessments and recommend changes. 

    The revised bill, if passed, would require the commission to approve recommendations from the work group by July 1, 2025, and to implement them within three years from that date. The commission also would be required to make annual reports to the Legislature. 

    Leslie Littman, CTA vice president, said that the amendments retaining the test were “disappointing” but that the creation of the work group is a positive step toward addressing the concerns that union members have had with the assessment.

    “I think that the way it was going to go, possibly the bill might not have made it out of the Legislature,” Littman said.

    Many teachers say the test is a waste of time

    Senate Bill 1263 was originally introduced by Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, chair of the Senate Education Committee, who said in April that eliminating the assessment would encourage more people to enter the teaching profession. He also said that it duplicates other requirements teachers must fulfill to earn a credential.

    K-12 teachers who commented on EdSource stories about the legislation were overwhelmingly critical of the assessment, stating that it is too time-consuming, caused anxiety and does not help prepare teachers for the classroom.

    California teacher candidates must pass either the California Teaching Performance Assessment (CalTPA), the Educative Teaching Performance Assessment (edTPA) or the Fresno Assessment of Student Teachers (FAST) before they can earn a preliminary teaching credential. The tests cost $300 total, or $150 per cycle, according to Littman.

    Education advocates call the test a valuable tool

    Proponents of the teacher performance assessments, however, say that eliminating them would have removed a valuable tool for evaluating teacher preparation programs and new teachers.  

    “We know when parents drop kids off at school, the most important thing in front of those kids is that teacher, and they want to make sure … that teacher is prepared to teach effectively, and that’s what the TPAs help do,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, an education advocacy organization.

    Criticism of the bill to eliminate the assessment grew when its authors amended it in late spring to remove the requirement that candidates for a preliminary, multiple-subject or education specialist credential pass a test that evaluates their ability to teach reading. 

    The move came less than three years after legislators passed Senate Bill 488, which next July will replace the unpopular written Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA) with a literacy teaching performance assessment. The Commission on Teacher Credentialing spent more than a year developing the assessment with the help of a working group of literacy experts. 

    Resistance against legislation built

    “Unsurprisingly, we got a little pushback from the Commission on Teaching Credentialing and some other folks who are stakeholders in this, including EdTrust-West and, not unimportantly, PTA groups,” Newman told EdSource on Wednesday. 

    After the legislation moved to the Assembly in late May, Education Committee Chair Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, began meeting with stakeholders, including the California Teachers Association, to discuss possible changes to the legislation. Representatives from the Commission on Teacher Credentialing also made their case for retaining the assessment to legislators.

    Education advocates showed up at a public hearing and also reached out to legislators and their staff, Tuck said. In early June, 13 education advocacy organizations, including EdVoice, signed a letter in opposition to the legislation.

    By June 17, the legislation had changed considerably.

    Legislation charges commission with more oversight 

    Along with retaining the teaching performance assessments, the proposed legislation would require the commission to report the number of teaching preparation programs with low passing rates on the assessment. The commission would be charged with helping these programs learn how to better prepare teacher candidates. 

    The commission also would be required to maintain a secondary passing standard for the assessment that takes into consideration other evidence of a teacher candidate’s performance.

    “ETW is hopeful that SB 1263 will now help to streamline and improve the administration and scoring of TPAs to ensure they are an additive, constructive experience for candidates, and that they do not have a disparate impact for candidates of color,” said Brian Rivas, senior director of policy and government relations for EdTrust-West (ETW), an education advocacy organization, in a letter to Assembly Appropriations Committee Chair Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland. “Doing so is critical for both addressing the state’s shortage of teachers of color and providing all students with teachers who are fully prepared to teach. For these reasons, we are pleased to support SB 1263.”

    The legislation has an annual price tag of $598,000, with $145,000 in start-up costs, according to a state analysis. It is currently being considered by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.  

    Revised bill a good compromise

    Tuck says the revised bill is an example of policy creation working correctly.

    “I think that strong pushback from advocacy organizations, as well as from the CTC (Commission on Teacher Credentialing), really helped to shift the direction of the bill,” he said. 

    Rivas said Newman likely “read the tea leaves” and realized he might have a fight on his hands if he got the bill to the governor’s desk. 

    Newman sees the compromise as a good outcome.

    “Legislation, sort of by definition, is a negotiation,” Newman said. “It was a commitment by the CTC to take a good, hard look and to reassess … the teacher performance assessment, so that it is not only less onerous but that it takes into account the existing demands on teaching candidates and also made sure that the assessment was fully relevant to the kind of skills and requirements that we are seeking from them.”

    The amendments are enough for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, EdTrust-West and other advocacy groups, to change course and support it.

    “The commission welcomes the opportunity to engage with educators, teacher education faculty and the larger communities of interest to review and strengthen this important part of California’s teacher preparation system,” said Marquita Grenot-Scheyer, chair, and Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, in a joint letter to Muratsuchi in late June. “As amended, SB 1263 (Newman) aligns with the commission’s commitment to the process of continuous improvement, and the commission enthusiastically supports its passage.”

    But this doesn’t mean the issue won’t return.

    “It doesn’t preclude us from watching and seeing what happens in this work group,” CTA’s Littman said. “Then it doesn’t stop us down the road from bringing legislation back.” 





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