Dear Commons Community,

The Democratic Party scored big wins Tuesday in gubernatorial races in several states including New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin where charter schools have taken root.  This may spell an “end to the golden era of charter schools”.  Below is an analysis by Eliza Shapiro that appears on page one of today’s New York Times.

Tony

New York Times

With Democratic Wins, Charter Schools Face a Backlash in N.Y. and Other States

By Eliza Shapiro

Nov. 10, 2018

Over the last decade, the charter school movement gained a significant foothold in New York, demonstrating along the way that it could build fruitful alliances with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other prominent Democrats. The movement hoped to set a national example — if charter schools could make it in a deep blue state like New York, they could make it anywhere.

But the election on Tuesday strongly suggested that the golden era of charter schools is over in New York. The insurgent Democrats who were at the forefront of the party’s successful effort to take over the State Senate have repeatedly expressed hostility to the movement.

John Liu, a newly elected Democratic state senator from Queens, has said New York City should “get rid of” large charter school networks. Robert Jackson, a Democrat who will represent a Manhattan district in the State Senate, promised during his campaign to support charter schools only if they have unionized teachers.

And another incoming Democratic state senator, Julia Salazar of Brooklyn, recently broadcast a simple message about charter schools: “I’m not interested in privatizing our public schools.”

No one is saying that existing charter schools will have to close. And in fact, New York City, which is the nation’s largest school system and home to the vast majority of the state’s charter schools, has many that are excelling.

Over 100,000 students in hundreds of the city’s charter schools are doing well on state tests, and tens of thousands of children are on waiting lists for spots. New York State has been mostly spared the scandals that have plagued states with weaker regulations.

But it seems highly likely that a New York Legislature entirely under Democratic control will restrict the number of new charter schools that can open, and tighten regulations on existing ones.

The defeat is magnified because Mr. Cuomo, a shrewd observer of national political trends with an eye toward a potential White House bid, recently softened his support for charter schools. Mayor Bill de Blasio is a longtime charter opponent with his own national aspirations.

And New York is not the only state where the charter school movement is facing fierce headwinds because of the election.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, an enemy of public sector unions, was unseated by a Democrat, Tony Evers, a former teacher who ran on a promise to boost funding to traditional public schools.

In neighboring Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat who promised to curb charter school growth, beat the incumbent Republican, Gov. Bruce Rauner, a supporter of charter schools. And in Michigan, a Democrat, Gretchen Whitmer, promised to “put an end to the DeVos agenda.”

Ms. Whitmer won her race for governor decisively against the state’s Republican attorney general, Bill Schuette, who is an ally of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary under President Trump. Ms. DeVos has been an outspoken proponent of charter schools in her home state of Michigan and nationally.

Now charter school supporters are wrestling with the unpleasant reality that a supposedly bipartisan movement, intended to rescue students from failing public schools, has been effectively linked to Wall Street, Mr. Trump and Ms. DeVos by charter school opponents.

Derrell Bradford, the executive vice president of a national group that backs charters, 50CAN, acknowledged that the election results raised new challenges. He said the situation was especially fraught because Mr. Trump has championed charter schools, making the issue toxic for some Democrats.

“I find it frustrating that the president’s support is often used as the reason for people to abandon support of charters and low-income families,” Mr. Bradford said.

Where insurgent national Democrats support charter schools, they do so carefully: Representative Jared Polis, the Colorado Democrat whom voters sent to the governor’s mansion on Tuesday, founded two charter schools. But he has made sure to criticize Ms. DeVos’s vocal brand of school choice advocacy.

Tuesday’s results were compounded by other recent blows for charters in liberal states.

In 2016, Massachusetts voters rejected a referendum that would have expanded the state’s high-performing charter schools. Though backers poured $20 million into the race, it was no match for Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, progressive stars who opposed the initiative.

Philanthropists tried again in California over the summer, when they spent $23 million to bolster the former Los Angeles mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, in the primary for governor. Mr. Villaraigosa, a Democrat, was easily beat by Gavin Newsom, the Democratic lieutenant governor, who has been vague about the role of charters as he seeks to make California an epicenter of opposition to the Trump administration.

Some advocates find a sliver of hope in the fact that even the most liberal Democrats acknowledge that charter schools are here to stay. Many opponents want to slow growth, not destroy charters.

“No matter how hostile some of the cities get to charters, the charters have endured,” said Jeanne Allen, the chief executive of the Center for Education Reform, a national school choice advocacy group.

In New York, the insurgent Democratic candidates’ criticism of charters was somewhat less central to their campaigns than their support for traditional public schools. And though most of those Democrats said they would reject any plan to expand charter schools, they are aware that charters are popular among some families in their own districts.

“You don’t want to alienate anybody,” said Alessandra Biaggi, who in the Democratic primary unseated one of the charter lobby’s most reliable allies, State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, in a Bronx district. “I understand why charter schools exist, I understand why they have come to the Bronx, I really get it. But we’ve got to focus on improving our public schools.”

But even the best-case scenario — widespread political ambivalence, rather than animus, toward charters — would have significant consequences for charter school supporters in New York.

The Legislature may not even bother to take up charter advocates’ most pressing need: lifting the cap on the number of charter schools that can open statewide. Fewer than 10 new charter schools can open in New York City until the law is changed in Albany.

That means the city’s largest charter networks, including the widely known Success Academy, will be stymied in their ambitious goal of expanding enough to become parallel districts within the school system.

But it is the smaller, more experimental charter schools that may have the most to lose.

“A new generation of schools will be thwarted,” said Steven Wilson, the founder of Ascend, a small network of Brooklyn charter schools.

And charters will now be partially regulated by the movement’s political foes. State Senate Democrats, with the lobbying support of teachers’ unions, are likely to push laws requiring charter schools to enroll a certain number of students with disabilities or students learning English. Previous proposals indicate that those politicians may force charters to divulge their finances, and could make it harder for charters to operate in public school buildings.

Those legislators could even impose a limit of about $200,000 on charter school executives’ salaries. At least two operators made over $700,000 in 2016.

Charter school advocates in Democratic states said defeat has made their political mission clear: Convince the holdouts of their liberal bona fides.

“What people don’t understand is that our previous politics obscured just how progressive the vast majority of people in the charter movement actually are,” James Merriman, C.E.O. of the New York City Charter School Center, said.

Still, some of the political wounds New York’s charter school sector has sustained appear self-inflicted, especially in light of the state’s eagerness to challenge Mr. Trump’s agenda.

Days after the 2016 election, Eva Moskowitz, the C.E.O. of Success Academy, interviewed with Mr. Trump for the role of education secretary. When she announced that she would not take the job, Ms. Moskowitz praised the president on the steps of City Hall.

The next day, Ms. Moskowitz hugged Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, when she visited a Success Academy school. A few months later, Ms. Moskowitz welcomed the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, to the same school during the fight to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which Mr. Ryan helped lead.

Students peered out the windows of the Harlem school as angry protesters waited outside, playing bongos and waving signs.

After a backlash from her staff, Ms. Moskowitz said she “should have been more outspoken” against Mr. Trump.

The situation got worse when one of Ms. Moskowitz’s most prolific donors, the hedge fund billionaire Daniel S. Loeb, said last summer that a black state senator who has been skeptical of charter schools had done more damage to black people than the Ku Klux Klan.

His comment was met with fury from black supporters of charter schools, some of the movement’s most indispensable allies.

On Tuesday, that senator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, became the next leader of the New York State Senate.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times and other media are reporting this morning that Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general, served on the advisory board of a Florida company that a federal judge shut down last year and fined nearly $26 million after the government accused it of scamming customers.

The company, World Patent Marketing, “bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars” by promising inventors lucrative patent agreements, according to a complaint filed in Florida by the Federal Trade Commission.

Court documents show that when frustrated consumers tried to get their money back, Scott J. Cooper, the company’s president and founder, used Mr. Whitaker to threaten them as a former federal prosecutor. Mr. Cooper’s company paid Mr. Whitaker nearly $10,000 before it closed.

Mr. Whitaker’s role in the company would complicate his confirmation prospects should President Trump nominate him as attorney general.

It is not clear if Mr. Trump was aware of Mr. Whitaker’s involvement with the patent marketing company before naming him as a replacement for Jeff Sessions, who was ousted by Mr. Trump on Wednesday.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. Whitaker’s ties to the patent company, which were first reported by The Miami New Times.

What a nice, fine upstanding citizen we have as our attorney general!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Watergate journalist, Carl Bernstein, in an interview on CNN yesterday commented about Jeff Sessions ouster as:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/carl-bernstein-donald-trump-jeff-sessions-coup_us_5be4dcdae4b0e8438895c54d

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, Donald Trump asked for and received Jeff Sessions resignation as U.S. Attorney General.  Many observers thought this would have happened sooner given the fear that the President has shown for how the Special Counsel Mueller investigation has been going.  Trump has felt that Sessions has not protected him enough from the special counsel probe into Russian collusion and obstruction of justice.  With Sessions out, Trump has appointed a loyalist in Mathew Whitaker as acting attorney general.  A New York Times editorial (see below) analyzes what this appointment means for Mueller.  Simply put,  “it ain’t good.”

Tony

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New York Times

Mueller Was Running on Borrowed Time. Has it Run Out?

In forcing out Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the president seems to want a lawman he can control.

By The Editorial Board

Nov. 7, 2018

Robert Mueller, the special counsel, always knew he was running the Russia investigation on borrowed time. That time may have just run out on Wednesday afternoon, when President Trump ousted his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, less than 24 hours after Republicans lost their eight-year lock on the House of Representatives.

So who’s going to protect Mr. Mueller now?

Until Wednesday, the job was being performed ably by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who assumed oversight of the Russia investigation when Mr. Sessions recused himself in March 2017.

Under Mr. Rosenstein’s leadership, the investigation Mr. Mueller took over has resulted in the felony conviction of the president’s former campaign chairman, guilty pleas from multiple other top Trump aides and associates and the indictments of dozens of Russian government operatives for interfering in the 2016 election. For more than a year, Mr. Rosenstein walked a political tightrope, guarding Mr. Mueller’s independence on the one hand while trying to appease Mr. Trump’s increasingly meddlesome demands on the other.

That task now falls to Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, who on Wednesday became acting attorney general and, far more alarmingly, the man Mr. Mueller now reports to.

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The good news is that no one, including Mr. Whitaker, can stop the multiple prosecutions or litigation already in progress — including the cooperation of Paul Manafort; the sentencing of Michael Flynn; or the continuing investigation of Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, and the Trump Organization by federal prosecutors in New York. The courts will have the final say on what happens in each of those cases.

Democrats will also soon be running the House, returning it to its place as a coequal branch of government and holding Mr. Trump to account for the first time since he took office. “We are immediately issuing multiple letters to key officials demanding that they preserve all relevant documents related to this action to make sure that the investigation and any evidence remains safe from improper interference or destruction,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who is expected to soon head the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The bad news is, well, pretty much everything else. Mr. Whitaker — who has been called the “eyes and ears” of the White House inside the Justice Department by John Kelly, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff — has expressed a Trumpian degree of hostility to the investigation he is now charged with overseeing. He has called it a “witch hunt” and, in its earliest months, wrote an opinion piece arguing that Mr. Mueller was coming “dangerously close” to crossing a “red line” by investigating the president’s finances. He has suggested there was nothing wrong in Mr. Trump’s 2017 firing of James Comey, the F.B.I. director, and he has supported the prosecution of Hillary Clinton. In an interview last year he described “a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment, and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.” In 2014, he headed the political campaign for Iowa state treasurer of Sam Clovis, who later became a Trump campaign aide and, more recently, a witness in the Russia investigation.

Conflicts of interest like this are what led Mr. Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. That was the ethical thing to do, even if it sent Mr. Trump into a spiral of rage.

Mr. Sessions, a veteran of the Senate, is an institutionalist at heart. “The Department of Justice,” he once said, “will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.” That sentiment was never going to survive long under Mr. Trump, for whom improper influence has been a central plank of governing philosophy. Ethics, not so much.

The irony is that Mr. Sessions was among the president’s most effective and loyal foot soldiers. Soon after becoming attorney general, he turned Mr. Trump’s cartoonish law-and-order campaign talk into reality by directing federal prosecutors to bring the harshest charges possible in all cases. He helped obliterate the legacy of President Barack Obama, Mr. Trump’s predecessor and nemesis, by pushing to scale back or end policies that Mr. Obama had championed, including legal protections for the 700,000 young immigrants who came to the United States as children.

But personal loyalty is what Mr. Trump really cares about, and on that count Mr. Sessions failed spectacularly. If Mr. Whitaker has any concern for the independence of the department he is taking over — not to mention the rule of law in America — he will follow Mr. Sessions’s lead and hand the reins of the investigation to someone less evidently invested in destroying it.

It’s not even clear Mr. Whitaker may legally hold the post of acting attorney general, since he has never been confirmed by the Senate. But if so, he could do a lot of damage, much of it behind closed doors. For example, he could tip off the White House to what the special counsel’s office is up to, or he could block Mr. Mueller from taking significant investigatory steps, like bringing an indictment, without having to notify Congress or the public until the investigation is complete. And any report Mr. Mueller ultimately submits goes directly to the attorney general — who may decide whether or not to pass it along to Congress.

Mr. Trump has made clear that he thinks the attorney general should function as a president’s personal lawyer, protecting him from justice and persecuting his enemies. In the days before Mr. Sessions recused himself last year, Mr. Trump tried desperately to stop him, at one point complaining, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to the infamous mob lawyer and fixer who had mentored him as a young man before dying in 1986.

The president may believe that in Mr. Whitaker he’s found his Roy Cohn. He may also believe that the Republican majority in the Senate — increased on Tuesday with likely Trump loyalists — is prepared to embrace such a corrupted standard for American justice. So it’s a good moment to recall another figure from that era — Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor, who said in the aftermath of the Saturday Night Massacre in 1973, “Whether we shall continue to be a government of laws, and not of men, is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.”

Dear Commons Community,

The article below appeared in Chalkbeat today.  It speculates on what the education agenda will be in New York as a result of the Democrats capturing both houses of the state legislature.  It was sent to me by my colleague, David Bloomfield.

Tony

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Democrats win control of New York state legislature. What this mean for education!

By Reema Amin –  11/07/18

Democrats won enough state Senate races on Tuesday to secure a majority for the first time since 2010, and in the process gained control of the New York legislature.

Senate Republicans previously held a working majority of one seat but in a midterm election where Democrats fell short in some races nationally but had a strong showing in the Empire state, the result was not surprising given statewide trends.

What do Tuesday night’s results mean for the future of education in New York? Not all issues fall along party lines, but there are a few things that are likely gain traction in the new legislative session in January.

School funding

Don’t be surprised to see a push for more state funding for local districts, an issue that every progressive Democrat who ran for office campaigned on.

They, like others who have fiercely pushed for more state funding, point to a school funding lawsuit that forced the state to come up with a new funding formula. Advocates for increasing the money flowing from Albany argue this new formula was never fully implemented, meaning the state still owes billions of dollars to districts.

The Democratic-controlled state Assembly has typically called for more funding than what is proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who also won re-election Tuesday. But with advocates for more state funding in both chambers, it’s possible there will be more pressure on Cuomo to open the coffers a little even as the state faces a budget deficit and potential economic uncertainty.But that doesn’t mean it will happen, said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. There is a property tax cap on districts (though these don’t include New York City) that rely on tax revenue for their schools, and Bloomfield doesn’t think Cuomo would raise state taxes to bring more funding in.

“You’re basically dealing with a state aid formula that’s fixed except for the margins,” Bloomfield said.

Charter schools

The support that the charter sector enjoyed from the previous legislature, thanks to strong backing from Senate Republicans, will likely erode, with several progressive Democrats having campaigned on platforms that included reining in charter schools.

That could mean an increase in oversight of charter schools. Proposals to regulate them more have previously failed in the senate, owing to Republican opposition.

As state officials approved another batch of charter-school openings in New York City this week, the state inched even closer to a legal limit on how many charters can open in the five boroughs and across the state.

Charter advocates want lawmakers to increase this cap, but it’s possible that the newly shaped legislature won’t even consider it.

Mayoral control

Mayor Bill de Blasio will look for legislators to renew his control over the city’s education system.

In the past, Senate Republicans used the issue as a budget bargaining chip and also as a way to punish a mayor who has often campaigned against them.

But a Democrat-led Senate doesn’t necessarily mean de Blasio will easily win support for renewed mayoral control within his party.

Some progressive Democrats, who support more grassroots governance, don’t support mayoral control, including former City Council education committee chair Robert Jackson, who had won 89 percent of the vote with 93 percent of precincts counted on Tuesday night.

But even these Democrats may hesitate to quickly return to the old system of local control, which would introduce new complications.

“I don’t think there’s legislative appetite,” Bloomfield said, “ to go back to community control.”

It’s more likely that mayoral control will be easier to reauthorize, and that de Blasio will earn a more than a one- or two-year extension, Bloomfield said.

Teacher evaluations

This week, the Board of Regents signaled it would extend its three-year-old, temporary ban on using state English and math exams to evaluate New York teachers.

By extending the moratorium by one year, state officials signaled they wanted more time to figure out the best way to evaluate teachers, a subject that has provoked prior backlash from educators and families.

And, with the extension expected to come right before the start of the legislative session, it’s possible that a Democratic-controlled legislature will seize the moment to make legislative changes to teacher evaluations.

Last year, the state Assembly passed a bill that would untie teacher evaluations from test scores, but it failed to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Democrats could try to raise the issue again, now that it might garner more support, or develop another bill after the Regents study the issue further.

Suspensions

A Democratic-controlled legislature might be more friendly toward finding alternatives to suspending students.

Easton, from Alliance for Quality Education, said discipline reform “was never going to see the light of day in the Senate.”

But a shift in party control could mean an easier path for those who want the state to shift away from punitive discipline policies in schools.

Last year, Assembly education committee chairwoman Cathy Nolan sponsored a bill that, in part, would require educators to use suspensions as a last resort to discipline students. The bill didn’t make it to a final vote.

In New York City, de Blasio has promoted a restorative justice model for student discipline, cutting back on suspensions, but the idea remains controversial among some teachers who say the approach doesn’t do enough to ensure orderly classrooms.

In a statement, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan called Tuesday’s results “disappointing,” but that senate Republicans will “continue to be a strong and important voice in Albany.”

“When we need to push back, we will push back,” Flanagan said. “And where we can find common ground, we will always seek it.”

State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, widely expected to be the first female majority leader, projected more Democrats would win their races Tuesday night as results rolled in.

“I am confident our majority will grow even larger after all results are counted, and we will finally give New Yorkers the progressive leadership they have been demanding,” Stewart-Cousins said in a tweet.

Dear Commons Community,

A closely watched-race in the education community was the Wisconsin governorship where Tony Evers, the state’s public education chief, defeated the incumbent, Scott Walker.  As reported by Vox:

“Wisconsin Democrats have finally done it: Tony Evers, the state’s public education chief, has defeated Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

In a nail-biting race, Evers came out ahead early Wednesday morning, after the late report of 45,000 uncounted ballots in Milwaukee County — a Democratic stronghold in Wisconsin. Evers amassed a lead outside the state’s recount threshold, which, ironically, Walker and the Republican state legislature had tightened only last year.

Walker has been something of a white whale for Democrats since he was first elected in 2010. He’s probably best known for being a conservative union buster, stripping public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights. Wisconsin Democrats tried to oust him in a recall election in 2012, and failed — only to watch him get reelected once more in 2014.

But Walker’s winning streak is over. And Evers, Wisconsin’s superintendent of public instruction, was the winning ticket.

Evers isn’t some rising-star candidate. Rather, he ran a straightforward, low-profile campaign on public education, infrastructure, and a strengthened public health care system.

He notably said he wants to repeal Walker’s union-busting measure that restricted public employees’ bargaining rights.

He proposed increasing school funding by $1.4 billion over the next two years and wants to phase out four voucher school programs, unless the state’s legislature agrees to substantially increase public education funding and add additional regulations for voucher schools. Evers has said he would keep the higher education tuition freeze for University of Wisconsin schools that Walker implemented, and said he would cut tuition fees for the state’s tech schools.

On health care, Evers wants to expand the state system by accepting the federal funding through Obamacare that Walker rejected, and he has committed to addressing drug pricing.

The unemployment rate in Wisconsin sits at a low 2.9 percent, but Democrats point out that wages haven’t kept up with the rate of inflation in lower-income sectors of the job market. Evers also opposes Walker’s deal to give a Chinese company, Foxconn Technology Group, $3 billion in tax breaks in exchange for their $10 billion factory. The deal has come under major attack after Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau reported that the state wouldn’t break even on the investment until 2043 — and possibly not even then.

Of course, this Democratic agenda won’t be easy in a state where Republicans still have a lot of power, a reality Evers has said he knows he will have to work under.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party has gone through years of devastating losses; Republicans control the state legislature, one of the US Senate seats, five of its eight House seats, and, until now, the governor’s mansion. In 2016, President Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win the state since 1984, beating Hillary Clinton by fewer than 30,000 votes.

But Evers’s win is a sign that Trump’s victory might have been a blip in a state that has a strongly purple history.

After all, hints of a Democratic landslide in 2018 showed up in Wisconsin state special elections early this year, when Democrats picked up two previously Republican-held state seats. In January, Democrats flipped a rural Trump +17 state Senate district with a comfortable 10-point margin of victory. Liberals also won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by a huge margin in April.

At the time, Walker called the loss “a wake-up call for Republicans in Wisconsin.” It turns out he was right to be worried.”

Congratulations Mr. Evers and the people of Wisconsin!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

For those of us who stayed up last night to watch the election returns, we saw the Democrats win the majority in the House of Representatives, the Republicans picking up seats to solidify their majority in the Senate, and state and local elections splitting with the Republicans winning the governorship in Florida (Rep. DeSantis defeated Dem. Gillum) and Democrats winning it in Wisconsin (Dem. Evers defeated Rep. Walker).  Votes were still being counted in the hotly-contest governor’s race in Georgia between Rep. Kemp and Dem. Walker).

With the Democrats winning control of the House of Representatives, President Trump will be waking up this morning to a new dawn in Washington politics as he now has to find a way to work (maybe compromise) with the Democrats.  It is the first time since he became president that he will have a major branch of government looking to rein in his independence.  The Democratic-controlled House will likely also be aggressive in supporting and maybe pursuing investigations of Trump, his cabinet and his family in terms of ethics, Russian collusion and obstruction of justice matters.

Here in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo led the charge of Democrats winning the majority of state and local elections.  The Democrats also won a majority of the seats in the state senate which will give them control of the assembly, the senate, and governorship.

The New York Times has a website where you can check out all the major election results.

In sum, it was a win and after 2016, a good win for the Democrats.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article advising what those interested in higher education should be watching for in today’s elections.  In addition to a referendum on the presidency of Donald J. Trump, voters will also have their say on a broad range of issues affecting higher education, including the free-college movement and Betsy DeVos, the nation’s education secretary. Here’s The Chronicle’s guide to some of the races and trends to watch for as the returns roll in tonight.

What’s next for the free-college and college-affordability movements?

In the final weeks of the campaign, health care and immigration have been the dominant themes. But higher education has emerged as an issue in several closely watched gubernatorial races, with candidates campaigning on free-college and College Promise programs.

In Maryland’s race for governor, the Democratic challenger, Ben Jealous, has proposed free community college for the state’s residents. Jealous also wants to make college free for students who plan to enter in-demand professions, and has said he would seek to eliminate the need for student loans at all four-year public colleges.

Shortly after Jealous announced those proposals, the Republican incumbent, Larry Hogan, proposed expanding Maryland’s tuition-free program, originally centered on community colleges, to include four-year institutions as well.

In Arizona, the Democratic candidate, David Garcia, has proposed making community-college tuition free for students who remain on track to receive a two-year degree. And if he becomes Connecticut’s next governor, Ned Lamont, a Democrat, wants the state to pay for the first two years of community college for any Connecticuters who commit to living and working in the state after they graduate.

Democrats have certainly become more vocal on the issue since Sen. Bernie Sanders’s run for president in 2016. A review by Inside Higher Ed found that nearly 10 Democratic gubernatorial candidates are running on some kind of free-college plan.

But the free-college movement isn’t just in the hands of governors. In Seattle, voters will be asked if property-tax revenue should be allocated to a free-college program for graduates of the city’s public schools.

Will voters give “Education Governor” Scott Walker a third term?

Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, became a darling of the right for his successful push to change collective-bargaining rules in the state. His hard-fought victory made him plenty of enemies on Wisconsin campuses; his subsequent proposals to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget, and to remove tenure protections from state law, ruffled even more feathers.

Now Walker aces a sharp challenge from the state’s school superintendent, Tony Evers, a Democrat. So the governor has tried to transform himself. As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel explains: “Knowing he would be under attack on the issue, Walker proclaimed himself ‘the education governor’ and has aired ads touting a $649 million increase in funding for public schools that the governor proposed.”

On higher ed, Walker has bragged to voters about freezing tuition at campuses in the Wisconsin system over the last six years. But Evers says those freezes, as well as a $250-million cut in funds for the UW system in 2015, are “destroying higher education in Wisconsin.” Will Walker’s rebranding work? The race is close, but many analysts think Evers has the upper hand.

Other gubernatorial races to watch.

In Illinois, the Democratic nominee, J.B. Pritzker, has hammered the Republican governor, Bruce V. Rauner, for deep cuts in higher education that occurred during a protracted stalemate between Rauner and lawmakers over the state budget. Rauner’s opponents say the loss of appropriations led nearly 20,000 Illinois students to seek higher education outside the state in 2016 alone.

Pritzker wants funding for the state’s universities and community colleges to be returned to the levels prevailing before Rauner’s election. For his part, Rauner has championed greater collaboration between the business community and universities in Chicago. He has said a booming economy will stimulate greater tax revenue, thereby enabling the state to spend more on higher education. Polling throughout the race has put the incumbent far behind.

In Oregon, the Republican candidate, Knute Buehler, told The Oregonian that the Democratic incumbent, Kate Brown, hadn’t done enough to raise college-going rates. Brown said she is proud of her work in reforming the state’s college-funding formula to reflect performance rather than enrollment.

And in Ohio, the former chief of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, wants voters to elect him the state’s next governor. Cordray has run on his record as a watchdog at the CFPB, which frequently tussled with student-loan companies. Seeking to counter that image, Cordray’s Republican opponent, Mike DeWine, has cast Cordray as a Washington insider who mismanaged the agency. The current governor, John R. Kasich, is barred from running for re-election by a term-limits law.

Did students have trouble voting?

With close races being contested at the federal and state levels across the country, election watchers will pay special attention to students’ ability to vote. An early-voting location at Texas State University was closed just three days after it began operating, but it has since reopened after an outcry. In Florida, early-voting stations on college campuses almost didn’t open because of a ban on campus locations imposed by Ken Detzner, the Republican secretary of state. A court order striking down the ban eventually opened up the polls closer to where students live and study.

Similarly, a judge struck down a law in New Hampshire that would have required students to prove they lived in the place they were voting. And in North Dakota, college students, in addition to Native Americans, could find it more difficult to vote because of a new voter-identification law.

This year’s ballot measures include questions of funding, the culture wars, and an unusual amendment in Florida.

Along with the free-college ballot initiative in Seattle, other governments are seeking direct input from voters on issues of higher education. In Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island, voters will decide on bond measures financing construction projects on their states’ colleges campuses, as well as for career-development programs.

In Montana, voters will be asked — as they are every 10 years — if they wish to continue taxing real estate and personal property to support the Montana University system for another decade. (They’ve voted “yes” in every decade since 1948.)

In Maryland, a measure would use revenue from video lotteries to support “opportunities for career and technical education programs that lead to a job skill or certificate, and allow students to obtain college credit and degrees while in high school at no cost to the student.”

In Massachusetts, voters will have the option of repealing a law enabling transgender people to access areas, such as bathrooms and locker facilities, based on their gender identification. The most recent polls have indicated that more than 70 percent of voters want to defeat the measure and keep the law on the books.

And in Florida, a sprawling measure will first ask voters if Floridians should provide death benefits to the spouses of first responders and active-duty members of the military. The measure does not mention that those benefits are already codified into law at various levels of government.

Those obviously popular provisions are accompanied by two other proposals that would have a real impact on higher ed. The first: Public colleges would be able to increase tuition only with a “supermajority” vote of their own Board of Trustees and another one by the state’s Board of Governors. The second would enshrine the structure of the state’s system of higher education in the Florida Constitution.

Academics on the ballot.

More than a dozen current and former academics are running for election in federal and state legislatures against incumbent representatives. Here is a list of races to watch. Let us know if there are others we missed.

On civil-rights policy, it may be House Democrats vs. Betsy DeVos.

If Democrats retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives, their current ranking member on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, would probably be selected as the committee’s chairman. Scott’s background as a former civil-rights lawyer has led to speculation that he would exercise his oversight powers to examine the Education Department’s civil-rights policies, which have been changed — softened, critics say — under DeVos.

Democrats have sought to tie the unpopular DeVos to their Republican opponents. In California, Katie Porter, a Democrat, has tried to cast her opponent, U.S. Rep. Mimi Walters, as in league with DeVos on issues like the rollback of Obama-era Title IX policies. Other candidates have produced similar ads.

Please go out and VOTE!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Today is Election Day and everyone regardless of political affiliation should go out and vote for the candidates of their choice.  There are governorships, state legislature positions, and all important Congressional and U.S. Senate seats being decided today. A lot is at stake and the American people need to make sure that their voices are heard and votes counted. So please take the time to VOTE!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Fox News said earlier today that it has stopped airing a controversial political ad paid for by President Donald Trump’s campaign, which likens members of the Central American migrant caravan to a man convicted of killing police officers in the U.S. 

Fox’s decision comes after CNN made headlines on Saturday for refusing to air it and after NBC came under fire for running it during prime time on Sunday night. 

“Upon further review, Fox News pulled the ad yesterday and it will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network,” ad sales president Marianne Gambelli said in a statement.

The 30-second spot includes footage of Luis Bracamontes, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico citizen sentenced to death in April for killing two police officers in California in 2014.

The ad compares his behavior to members of the caravan, which mostly comprises adults and children who plan to legally seek asylum at ports of entry into the U.S. The video then urges viewers to “vote Republican” before a voiceover from Trump says he approves the message.

CNN called out the ad as blatantly “racist” in replying to critical tweets from Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, who charged that the network would “only run fake news and won’t talk about real threats.”

Fox’s decision follows NBC saying earlier Monday that it had erred in running the ad. 

“After further review, we recognize the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible,” said Joe Benarroch, a spokesperson for the NBC advertising sales department. 

Facebook said Monday it will remove the ad from its platforms. 

Despite the backlash, the Trump campaign shows no signs of backing down on the ad. Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, unleashed an angry tweet about the ad pull shortly after Fox News, Trump’s favorite media outlet, made its announcement, though he did not single out the network. The ad is Trump’s latest effort to rouse fear about the migrant caravan in the days ahead of the midterm elections. Last week, he announced he was sending more than 5,200 troops to the U.S.’s southern border despite the caravan being weeks away and posing no known threat. 

It is hard to believe that Trump-friendly Fox made this decision!

Tony