School Choice is Good For America; round 4

[Muda69]

Anti‐School Choice “History” Keeps Getting the History Wrong

https://www.cato.org/blog/anti-school-choice-history-keeps-getting-history-wrong

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For several years, I tried to be understanding of people who tie school choice to racial segregation. After all, some people after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling did want to use choice to bypass integration. But just as the fact that the worst monsters in human history breathed air does not make air‐breathing evil, supporting freedom, even if some people have used it for ill, does not make freedom heinous. And frankly, I’m at my wits’ end with choice opponents who proclaim dastardly motives and ignore historical reality to smear choice proponents as monstrous.

Enter Nancy MacLean—author of Democracy Unchained—with a Washington Post op‐ed that we have seen in its basic form many times before. It eschews the history of school choice before Brown; says Milton Friedman was at best unconcerned, at worst sympathetic to, segregationists; and most spectacularly, ignores a little thing called “force” and the gargantuan injustices perpetrated by government‐controlled education, AKA, public schooling.

First, a quick response to the implication that Friedman supported segregation in calling for choice around the same time as Brown. Actually, “implication” is too generous a gloss on MacLean’s piece. While she leaves some doubt where Friedman stood, she nonetheless writes that Friedman and other major libertarians and conservatives “backed the White southern cause.” And even if Friedman’s desire truly was freedom, it was really only “White freedom.”

This accusation has been repeatedly debunked, but just as a quick recap, yes, Friedman wrote that he believed in freedom over force in his seminal 1955 book chapter, “The Role of Government in Education.” As a result, he condemned government‐forced segregation but also opposed government‐imposed “nonsegregation.” That said, he also wrote that if he had to choose between forced segregation and forced integration he would select the latter.

Not only did Friedman oppose forced segregation, he explicitly argued for choice as an integrator. That, of course, indicated a desire for integration. It was also consistent with burgeoning research on intergroup contact, which showed divisive effects when putting groups into competition with one another. Forced integration, well‐intended and morally compelling though it was, created just such competition.

Moving on, the idea of school choice – that people should be able to choose among a multiplicity of different schools – was born well before Brown.

Crucially, education only became widely provided by government around the middle‐to‐latter 19^th century, which means that by the 1950s the system by which everyone paid for, and de facto attended, government schools was less than a century old. Before that, choice was the norm, with people using lots of different schools and education arrangements. And they did so widely, achieving a greater than 90 percent literacy rate among white adults by 1840.

Why only white adults? Because many governments – the entities that establish and control public schools, and from which choice frees people – prohibited African Americans from being educated. Indeed, economist Friedrich Hayek, whom MacLean smears as in league with segregationists, nailed the long, ugly reality of public schooling, writing in his 1960 book The Constitution of Liberty that “we must remember that it is the provision of education by government which creates such problems as that of the segregation of Negroes in the United States.”

Returning to school choice history, while the public schooling movement essentially began with the crusade of Horace Mann in the late 1830s and 1840s, the possibility of government funding education was entertained before that. Thomas Paine, for instance, in 1791 called for government education funding, but wrote that “the ministers of every parish, of every denomination” would “certify jointly to an office…that this duty is performed.” Education would be provided by families’ chosen religious denominations.

As public schools developed in the 19^th century United States, however, uniformity, including pan‐Protestant religion, often took hold. This kicked off the first major school choice struggle in the United States: Roman Catholics, who could not with clear consciences use many public schools, fighting to get funding for their own institutions. The effort went on in various ways and levels of intensity for decades, but MacLean does not mention Catholics at all.

Continuing with theory, in 1859 John Stuart Mill wrote that government should require education. It should not, however, provide it, instead funding choice. Why?

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.

A call for liberty that can only come with education pluralism was not pulled out of a historical vacuum, or based just on unhappy American Catholics, but centuries of European experience with religious strife. The need to defuse and avoid such strife is why many European countries, Canadian provinces, and other governments base education in choice of different religious schools and more. Of course, none of this gets a mention in MacLean’s piece.

The other history that gets the silent treatment from MacLean is the mammoth and inescapable‐because‐government‐forced‐it segregationist history of public schooling. It was, indeed, government force that was the target of Brown v. Board, which is far more dangerous than private choice because it is ultimately imposed at the point of a gun. Even absent de jure segregation, government often de facto forced segregation via discriminatory housing policies, policies that have a lasting public schooling impact today.

Perhaps because of public schooling’s long and expansive history of injustice, surveys have repeatedly shown that African Americans strongly desire school choice, which MacLean only hints at by writing that “some parents of color” have come to support choice. Research also suggests that private school choice in the United States has an integrating effect, as Friedman predicted.

MacLean makes one more assertion: that Friedman wanted education to work as a free market, though she acknowledges that he said some government provision for the poor might remain. She then leaps to a conclusion: “The system…would produce staggering inequalities, far more severe than the disparities that already exist today.”

MacLean offers no evidence for her conclusion. She just states it. This is a big problem, because the inequalities in the current, public school dominated system are very deep, with lower‐income students having much lower literacy and numeracy levels than wealthier children, whose tuition is often the staggering price of a house in a “good” district. More important, research suggests that choice not only leads to better outcomes for those who have it, but also public schools facing families with choice. Competition, it seems, powerfully incentivizes improvement.

Of course, the ultimate case for freedom is not test scores or graduation rates, but that the massive force of government, which for so long was used to keep African Americans down, does not determine one’s fate. The formerly oppressed gain power of their own, no matter how much choice opponents try to claim the opposite.

 

[Muda69]

Parents Should Control Education

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/october/04/parents-should-control-education/

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During last week’s Virginia gubernatorial debate, Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe promised that as governor he would prevent parents from removing sexually explicit books from school libraries, because he doesn't think “parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

McAuliffe's disdain for parents who think they should have some say in their children’s education is shared by most “progressives,” as well as some who call themselves conservatives. They think parents should obediently pay the taxes to fund the government schools and never question any aspect of the government school program.

School officials' refusal to obey the wishes of parents extends to the anti-science mask mandates. Mask mandates are not only useless in protecting children from a virus they are at low risk of becoming sick from or transmitting, the mandated mask-wearing actually makes children sick! Yet school administrators refuse to follow the science if that means listening to parents instead of the so-called experts.

Replacing parental control with government control of education (and other aspects of child raising) has been a goal of authoritarians since Plato. After all, it is much easier to ensure obedience if someone has been raised to think of the government as the source of all wisdom and truth, as well as the provider of all of life’s necessities.

In contrast to an authoritarian society, a free society recognizes that parents have both the responsibility and the right to provide their children with a quality education that reflects the parents’ values. Teachers who use their positions to indoctrinate children in beliefs that contradict the views of the parents are the ones overstepping their bounds.

Restoring parental control of education should be a priority for all who believe in liberty. If government can override the wishes of parents in the name of “education” or “protecting children’s health” then what area of our lives is safe from government intrusion?

Fortunately, growing dissatisfaction with government schools is leading many parents to try to change school policies. Parents are also responding by pursuing alternatives to government schools, including the option hated most by authoritarians: homeschooling.

The unnecessary coronavirus lockdowns and the teachers union officials’ support for keeping schools closed have also contributed to the growth in homeschooling.

.......

 

[DanteEstonia]

On 10/5/2021 at 8:21 AM, Muda69 said:

“parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

You have clearly never dealt with a parent in an educational setting. 

[Muda69]

1 hour ago, DanteEstonia said:

You have clearly never dealt with a parent in an educational setting. 

So you believe most parents are idiots.  Good to know.

 

[DanteEstonia]

On 10/12/2021 at 8:06 AM, Muda69 said:

So you believe most parents are idiots.  Good to know.

A lot of them are. 

[Impartial_Observer]

On 10/17/2021 at 12:18 PM, DanteEstonia said:

A lot of them are. 

Perhaps had they had school choice, things would have turned out better for them. 

[DanteEstonia]

2 hours ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Perhaps had they had school choice, things would have turned out better for them. 

It certainly hasn’t happened yet, saying this from experience as someone who has taught at two charter schools.

[Muda69]

Study: School Choice Programs Save States Money

https://reason.com/2021/11/18/study-school-choice-programs-save-states-money/

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More than 18 months into a pandemic that has upended school districts across the country, parents increasingly support alternatives to the traditional top-down public school system. But school choice doesn't just offer more options to families—a new study suggests that it has benefits for states too.

EdChoice, a nonprofit that supports school choice, released the study this month. It found that among 40 different tuition-grant and tax-credit programs nationwide, there was a cumulative net savings from 2011 to 2018 of between $12 billion and $28 billion. Much of the savings stem from the cost difference: In some cases, the cost of traditional public schooling is nearly triple what would be spent on private schools.

This news arrives as parental dissatisfaction with their children's schools is causing trouble for elected Democrats. Earlier this month, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, heavily favored to retake Virginia's governorship, was defeated by Republican newcomer Glenn Youngkin. While many reasons were likely at play, one of the most prominent was McAuliffe's apparent animus toward parental involvement in school curricula. "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach," the candidate said in a debate, handing Youngkin a valuable soundbite. After a year and a half when parents were forced to become de facto substitute teachers, and in some cases took issue with the lessons' content, the sentiment rankled plenty of voters.

Unfortunately, it remains unclear how far that lesson will travel. Earlier this month, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan vetoed two bills that would have provided low-income and at-risk students with scholarships for extracurricular assistance. The bills would have established an Education Savings Account (ESA) program, in which parents would receive money from scholarships funded by tax-deductible donations; they could then use those funds however they saw fit to help their children catch up. Whitmer had already vetoed an earlier bill intended to help low-performing students, saying that it was too similar to a "voucher program." Similarly, the Michigan Democrat derided the newer bills as an attempt to "privatize education."

Arizona has the oldest ESA program in the country. The EdChoice study found that it saves the state's taxpayers between $1 billion and 3.2 billion over the eight years included. And it's broadly popular with the parents who participate.

Rather than reward McAuliffe with another term in office, voters opted for the candidate who campaigned on greater school choice. Democrats like Whitmer should heed the voters' choice—both for their constituents' sake, and for their own.

 

 

[DanteEstonia]

On 11/19/2021 at 11:56 AM, Muda69 said:

Study: School Choice Programs Save States Money

https://reason.com/2021/11/18/study-school-choice-programs-save-states-money/

 

...probably by not taking in SPED kids. My charter school doesn’t, to a certain extent.

[Muda69]

The Virginia Elections Showed Some Parents Are Seeing How Bad the Government Schools Really Are

https://mises.org/wire/virginia-elections-showed-some-parents-are-seeing-how-bad-government-schools-really-are

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In the aftermath of the Virginia gubernatorial elections, armchair pundits are still offering their spin on the upset that Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin pulled off against former governor Terry McAuliffe. While there’s a lot of talk about the results of this election being a referendum on the Biden administration’s plummeting approval rate and mishandling of the economy, education is one local contributing factor behind Republicans’ strong performance in the Old Dominion that cannot be overlooked.

After all, off-year elections at the state levels tend to be somewhat insulated from DC happenings. By default, local issues take precedence over DC topics du jour. According to exit polls, education figured prominently among issues that brought Virginians to the polls. Exit poll data from the Washington Post showed that education was among the top three issues that concerned Virginian voters.

While the instruction of key concepts of critical race theory was a major factor (and will continue to be so) in motivating Virginians to vote against the Left, other permutations of leftist indoctrination and social experiments germinating inside of public schools provoked a strong response from disaffected voters in Virginia.

After government-sponsored lockdown measures compelled many students to take their classes online, parents now had the chance to look over their children’s shoulders and find out what they were being taught. Parents who casually dumped their children off at glorified taxpayer-funded daycare centers received a rude wake-up call once they grasped the level of indoctrination their children were being subjected to. Some parents were so impacted by what they learned that they ended up rushing to their local school board meetings and gave education functionaries a piece of their mind.

It also didn’t help that throughout the campaign trail Terry McAuliffe did everything possible to position himself as the candidate of the education establishment.

McAuliffe outdid himself by declaring that parents had no right to tell schools what to teach. To cap it all off, McAuliffe held a campaign rally with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, right before election time. Weingarten heads the largest teacher union in the nation and was one of the most enthusiastic boosters of covid-19 lockdowns.

To say that McAuliffe’s campaign was oozing with elitism would be an understatement. Regardless of how one felt about Republicans, the moralizing of the promask, prolockdown crowd and the aloofness of the edu-cracy throughout the pandemic was an insufferable maelstrom of elitism that had to go down at the polls.

One of the key lessons from the Virginia elections is that paying attention to local issues is of the utmost importance for any meaningful change to occur in politics. People tuning in to their local affairs is superior to having one’s eyes glued to federal politics and futilely pulling the lever for politicians who do scant little to roll back the state’s encroachments on people’s daily lives.

Altogether, the Virginia race is not about Youngkin but the grassroots discontent that got him elected. In fact, Youngkin has all of the trappings of a conventional Republican who’ll regurgitate bland talking points about conservative values and enact some marginal tax cuts here and there. Nothing special when it comes to making transformational reforms that put the administrative state on a diet.

Nevertheless, there are silver linings that can be found. What’s on display in Virginia is a generalized discontent toward institutions that have been traditionally treated as normal fixtures of American politics. People who were previously intoxicated by propaganda about government schools serving as institutions that educated and civilized the masses are now sobering up to the realities of government schooling. Now it’s dawning upon many bewildered parents that government schools function as indoctrination centers and are increasingly turning into dangerous social experiments.

From a big picture perspective, there’s reason to be cautiously optimistic about the prospects of education reform. Over the past two decades, homeschooling has been on the rise. According to a Yahoo! News report released at the end of August, 11 percent of US households are now homeschooling. Overall, that means 5 million children are no longer under the thumbs of indoctrination agents cosplaying as educators.

Contrast this to 1999, when the percentage of students being homeschooled stood at around 1.7 percent. In that year, there were 850,000 school-aged children being homeschooled according to numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Perhaps under Youngkin’s watch government will not move much in terms of education freedom. After all, history has repeatedly shown, at least at the federal level, that the Republican Party is not a vehicle for the structural reforms Americans need in order to live free from the grasp of the managerial state. But one positive takeaway from this election cycle is the burgeoning local engagement across Virginia, and nationwide, for that matter. A redirection of energy from federal activism to state and local activism is a good first step toward building movements that will hack away at the state’s myriad tentacles of power.

Undoubtedly, winning on the education front would yield massive results for liberty, as it would deprive petty despots of the opportunity to poison millions of malleable minds with pro-state propaganda. A significant reason why statism is so embedded in the psyche of so many Americans is the state’s ability to throw countless youth on the indoctrination conveyor belt and endlessly churn out pro-state zealots.

If there’s one political fight worth seeing through, it’s the crusade against government schooling. Defeating edu-crats once and for all would be one of the most effective ways to put the administrative state on a diet. 

 

[Muda69]

Don't Ban Critical Race Theory. Legalize School Choice.

https://reason.com/2022/01/12/dont-ban-critical-race-theory-legalize-school-choice/

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Glenn Youngkin recently was elected Virginia's governor partly because he promised to ban teaching of CRT.

CRT stands for critical race theory, which argues that every American institution upholds white supremacy.

Before Youngkin's surprise victory, the media mocked him for complaining about CRT.

NBC's Nicolle Wallace said it isn't even taught in public schools. "That is like us banning the ghosts!" she laughed.

She is wrong.

In my new video, journalist Asra Nomani reveals some rather creepy CRT lessons that are taught in many schools.

Nomani filed Freedom of Information Act requests that forced school districts to reveal how they pay consultants to spread critical race theory.

"We found 300-plus contracts," says Nomani. "Every day, I'm getting a new contract. For them to deny it is just part of their campaign."

A CNN guest, history teacher Keziah Ridgeway, admits that CRT influences how some teachers teach. "That's a good thing, right?" she says. "Because race and racism is literally the building blocks of this country."

Really? The building block?

No!

America does have a long, nasty history of racism. Some racism persists. But it's not the "building block."

"They want to look at all of society through issues of race," complains Nomani. That's "propaganda that's claiming our children."

"Claiming the children?" I push back. "That's exaggeration."

She pulled out some of the children's books that are now part of the curriculum at some schools.

Woke Baby teaches kids to be "a good revolutionary."

A Is for Activist reads like a union recruiting manual. "M is for 'Megaphones Marching.'…Hooray! It Must be May Day!"

Not My Idea calls "whiteness" a deal with the devil. It portrays a white person with a pointy tail and goat hooves and tells children that they sell their souls because "whiteness" gives them "stolen land" and "stolen riches."

The author, Anastasia Higginbotham, says, "I made a book for white children that encourages them to connect with their heartbreak about racism."

Nomani says, "Just imagine if a black child was to get a book that said 'blackness is a bad deal?'…Shame is used as a lever of control over people. It should not be done with children."

"America has a history of racism," I say.

"We have to confront it," she says. "But America does not have a monopoly on racism. I come from a nation of people of 'color,' and they are racist."

India, her home country, had a nasty caste system for thousands of years.

Slavery began in the Middle East. It thrived in Africa long before slaves were brought to America. Americans (along with Brits, the French, and Mexicans) actually helped end the practice.

But today American students think America invented slavery.

This is "state-sponsored indoctrination," says Nomani. "It is a bigotry that they are teaching….It's just so immoral. I am a brown Muslim woman, an immigrant in America. I know more freedoms in this country than I could in any Muslim country in the world."

"But they're not in a Muslim country," I point out. "They're in America, and there is still racism here."

"But to suggest that this is all of America is as racist and bigoted…as being racist and bigoted against people of color," she responds.

People need to care about this, says Nomani, "because it's the taxpayers that are funding this."

Some conservatives want to ban the teaching of CRT. That's not a good idea. Government shouldn't be banning ideas or taking choices away from teachers. Bans shield students from important topics.

A better solution is legalizing school choice.

Let parents take our tax money to a school we choose.

 

[Muda69]

Hispanic Students Were Forced To Learn Critical Race Theory. They Hated It.

https://reason.com/2022/01/31/critical-race-theory-taught-in-classroom-california/

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During the 2020 fall semester, Kali Fontanilla—a high school English language teacher working in the Salinas, California, school district—noticed that many of her students were failing one of their other classes: ethnic studies. This was at the height of the pandemic, and instruction was entirely online, leaving many students in the lurch. Still, Fontanilla thought it was odd to see so many Fs.

Salinas has a majority Mexican population; all of Fontanilla's students were Hispanic and were learning English as a second language. Education officials who propose adding ethnic studies to various curriculums—and making it mandatory, as the Salinas school district did—typically intend for privileged white students to learn about other cultures. There's a certain irony in requiring members of an ethnic minority to study this, and an even greater irony in the fact that such students were struggling intensely with the course.

"My students are failing ethnic studies," says Fontanilla, who is of Jamaican ancestry. "I would say half of them are failing this ethnic studies class."

This made Fontanilla curious about what the course was teaching. All of the high school's teachers used the same online platform to post lesson plans and course materials, so Fontanilla decided to take a look. She was shocked by what she saw.

"This was like extreme left brainwashing of these kids," says Fontanilla. "Critical race theory all throughout the lessons, from start to finish. The whole thing."

Critical race theory, or CRT, has become a flashpoint in the debate about what kids ought to be learning in public schools. Originally an obscure, left-wing body of thought that mostly appeared in graduate schools, critics charge it with influencing diversity workshops for major corporations, training seminars for teachers, and even K-12 curricula. Parental concerns about CRT became a major flashpoint in the 2020 Virginia gubernatorial race. After winning the race and taking office, Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin's first act was to ban CRT.

Many adherents of CRT deny that it's taught to primary education students, and the mainstream media have been quick to line up behind such claims. That's why Fontanilla's discovery was so significant.

"The teacher had the kids all learn about the four I's of oppression," says Fontanilla. The four I's were institutional, internalized, ideological, and interpersonal oppression. "And then there was a whole presentation on critical race theory and they actually had the students analyze the school through critical race theory."

Slides from lesson plans provided by Fontanilla confirm that the ethnic studies course references critical race theory by name.

 

Kali Fontanilla

 

Kali Fontanilla

The original meaning of the theory, at least when taught at the college level, is that racism so pervades U.S. society and U.S. institutions that it is impossible to separate race from other issues: All policies, structures, and laws were built under the auspices of racism, a sort of original sin that shapes the country's institutions. In common parlance, opponents often use the term "CRT" to refer a broader set of concepts, like intersectionality—the idea that there are different kinds of oppression that all stack on top of each other—and privilege.

"The kids don't even want this stuff," says Fontanilla, noting that the ethnic studies course replaced a much more popular health class—in the midst of a pandemic, no less. "Most of them are just like, 'Why do we have to take this class?'"

They would have to direct that question to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state's Democratic-controlled legislature, which decided to mandate ethnic studies for all public schools. Newsom vetoed a previous mandate, which came under fire because the proposed curriculum included "jargon such as 'cisheteropatriarchy' and 'hxrstory,' and refers to capitalism as a form of power and oppression alongside white supremacy and racism," according to Cal Matters.

The legislature re-worked the ethnic studies proposal, and on October 8, 2021, Newsom signed the mandate into law. Beginning with the class of 2030, all public high school students in California will now have enroll in the same sort of course that Fontanilla's students already took.

In a statement to The Epoch Times, Dan Burns, superintendent of Salinas Union High School district, denied that the course was based on CRT, though he conceded that CRT "is addressed in our course as one of the frameworks within the K-12 Ethnic Studies Outcomes list."

Indeed, CRT is referenced in the district's ethnic course syllabus, which is available online. The syllabus stresses that students will study "intergenerational trauma" through an interdisciplinary and critical lens. Scholarly articles about critical race theory are included in the suggested curriculum, including "Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth," by Tara J. Yosso, a UCLA professor of education who specializes in critical race theory.

One of suggested activities for students is an "intersectional rainbow."

"Students will rank their various identities with corresponding colored strings to create intersectional rainbows. Gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, beliefs, nationality, ability, age, etc.," reads the syllabus. "Students will compare and contrast their intersectional rainbows with their peers, while framing their discourse within the intersectionality paradigm as laid out by Kimberlé Crenshaw."

Crenshaw, a Columbia University law professor, is widely recognized as one of CRT's founding figures. (Vanity Fair once called her the "mastermind of critical race theory.")

Other possible classroom activities include hosting a mock trial where they accuse various historical persons of being complicit in the genocide of Native Californians and "creating a social justice oriented counter-narrative."

Salina's version of the course included a "privilege quiz": Students were expected to rank themselves based on their marginalized status or lack thereof. The lesson plan included an image of two white girls—former Republican President George W. Bush's twin daughters, to be precise—at the top of the privilege hierarchy.

"Some people are born in third base and think they hit a triple," says Fontanilla, recalling the intended message of the exercise. "So basically, they were born on third base and they graduated college because they had a head start."

Many people might consider such activities to be a form of left-wing activism infiltrating the classroom . Fontanilla is one of them. As a Christian, a conservative, and a black woman, she doesn't believe that students—especially her students, learning English as a second language—need to be taught to check their privilege.

"It's hyper-race-focused," says Fontanilla. "And whenever there's hyper race focus, racism will follow."

Fontanilla decided that district parents had a right to know what was in the curriculum, and took steps to obtain the lesson plans so that she her job would not be at risk if she leaked them. But when the district handed over the documents, it omitted the slides that included the words critical race theory.

She decided to write a letter to the school board in protest of the ethnic studies curriculum. It was read aloud at a meeting on June 22.

"I do not appreciate constantly being pandered to and treated differently because of the color of my skin, especially since I did not have the freedom to not go along with it," Fontanilla wrote, warning that the curriculum was an attempt at left-wing indoctrination. The statement elicited cheers from other parents attending the meeting. In response, the school board prohibited anti-CRT comments at its next public gathering.

"You know it's something evil when they get so nasty defending it," says Fontanilla.

While she has received much praise for speaking out, Fontanilla has also endured considerable online harassment, including threats of violence. One told her to "have fun being a token black friend to racist conservatives your whole life."

"They're all basically white liberals," she says of the harassers.

Fontanilla had already decided that she could not remain a teacher in the school district; she and her husband decided to move to Florida, where she hoped to find a better job. The twin experiences of remote instruction during the pandemic and race-focused education has left her feeling cold about the teaching profession. She recalls that during the summer of 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, the Salinas administration informed its black teachers—Fontanilla included—that they would be honored with a gift.

The gift, it turned out, was a mask bearing the message: Black Teachers Matter.

"I would never wear it in front of my students," she says. "I think especially if a kid isn't into Black Lives Matter and I'm wearing this Black Teachers Matter mask, that kid automatically knows they can't speak up in my class."

The gift also included an "I Love Being Black" sticker, and a letter with an ancient African greeting that "acknowledges the god in me and stuff like that."

"It was just so weird," she says.

 

[Muda69]

TJ High School’s Race Problem: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/tj-high-schools-race-problem/

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Ground Zero for wokeness is Fairfax County, Virginia. It is 65 percent white and votes solidly Democratic. The median income is over $124 thousand. I used to live there; it was common to hear white people brag about having black friends (at work, you know, not the kind that come over to the house) and worry about whatever the issue-of-the-week was on NPR. Hell, with the county’s proximity to Washington, D.C., people there work for NPR.

The jewel in Fairfax’s public school system is Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, known to all simply as “T.J.” It is not an exaggeration to say T.J. is a critical part of America staying ahead of other national economies. T.J. is widely considered the best STEM high school in the country.

 

Things worked well at T.J. until about a year ago, based on the fact that the only way in was to pass a very competitive entrance exam. Entry into T.J. meant you were a smart kid with the discipline to put in hard hours with no guarantee of success, a perfect definition of those who would also go on to succeed at MIT.

The problem was the dang Asians. As many as 73 percent of students admitted to Thomas Jefferson High School were Asian. Some locals felt black and Hispanic students were underrepresented, as typically only about 2 percent of T.J. students were black. The solutions were: a) To improve all middle schools in the area so they better prepare their kids to compete to enter T.J.; b) Offer all students rigorous after-school accelerated STEM programs; or c) Just lower TJ’s admission criteria to balance out the races in line with progressive politics.

Yeah, they did C. The crazy-hard T.J. entrance exam was replaced with

A holistic review…of students whose applications demonstrate enhanced merit…Students will be evaluated on their grade point average (GPA); a student portrait sheet where they will be asked to demonstrate Portrait of a Graduate attributes and 21st century skills; a problem-solving essay; and experience factors, including students who are economically disadvantaged, English language learners, special education students, or students who are currently attending underrepresented middle schools. (Emphasis added)

Experience factors? That basically opened the door to that criterion being “whatever we say it means.” The result at T.J. was a drop of more than 11 percent in the number of Asians, and double-digit growth on the part of blacks and Hispanics, achieved by making being poor a check-off for acceptance. No one cares white students account for only 22 percent of admissions, despite being 65 percent of the county population.

This is all the crudest kind of racist thought, the same as practiced by the KKK, thinking all blacks are alike. Progressives act as though everything is fixed if schools just sling a couple more darker-skinned kids into the back row come class picture day.

But is it racism? Seems so. One school board member texted another, “I mean there has been an anti-Asian feel underlying some of this, hate to say it lol,” according to correspondence obtained by non-profit Parents Defending Education. In another exchange, Thomas Jefferson’s admissions director asked a school district official if she could “provide us a review of our current weighting (of experience factors) and whether or not this would be enough to level the playing field for our historically underrepresented groups.” The official replied, “My gut says that you may need to double all the points so the applicants can receive up to 200 points overall for these experience factors.” Another school board member wrote we “screwed up TJ and the Asians hate us,” to which another responded he was “just dumb and too white” to address the diversity deficit properly.

The school then went further. There will now be three different “pathways” for admissions: the first for 350 high-performing students, the second for 100 students judged on a combination of half academic merit and half external factors, and 50 underrepresented students. Some people in town call them the yellow, brown, and black lanes.

We’ve gotten so twisted by thinking America is shackled by systemic racism that we built a system of education admissions on a foundation of systemic racism. We somehow think racially gerrymandering schools is a solution. We ignore John Roberts’ dictum,”The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Why are we so hell-bent on self-harm as to sacrifice our education system on layers of false progressive assumptions?

The first false assumption is access to learning equals learning. A student has to be prepared intellectually to succeed, or he fails, or the institution is forced to dumb down to accommodate him. Progressive education thought demands people publicly disavow what we all know to be true, that some students are smarter and work harder than other students. We are absolutely not all alike. Imagine if colleges chose who would play on their football teams based not on athletic skill but racial quotas? Who knew schooling was only skin deep, and the football team more intellectually honest than the philosophy department?

The next false assumption is the magic number: X percent of the population is black so X percent of the student body should be black. If it is not, the thinking goes, de facto some form of systemic racism must be at play. This typically focuses on the admissions process (to include testing, like the SAT) and thus the answer is to scrap every part of the admissions process that seems to rub against that X percent. You don’t have to show question 27 on the SAT is itself “racist,” only that the SAT results won’t get X percent of black kids into Harvard and must ipso facto be racist. So, let more black kids into Harvard by eliminating the SAT and that will result in more black doctors and lawyers and a more just society. Problem solved.

Well, sort of. There still is that issue of the fact getting admitted to Harvard is not the same as graduating from Harvard; a student still has to understand the classes and put in the hard work of studying, that important form of delayed gratification. And Harvard only has so much space so to let in more black kids means saying no to others. In most progressive instances, that means telling “Asians” to go away (the term “Asian” itself is yet another false and disrespectful assumption, that somehow Chinese, Thais, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Laotians, Indians, Bangladeshis, et al., are lumpable into one omnibus racial garbage can.)

What you’re left with is the certainty that more exclusion by race is the answer to the alleged problem of exclusion by race. After some 40 years of seeing something that egregiously dumb as a good idea, the issue is now coming again before the courts for a reality check, starting in Fairfax County, Virginia. Someone in the process may decide it’s time to ask why we regularly end up with “cosmetically diverse” institutions, rather than anything real that leads to broad social progress.

A group calling themselves the Coalition for T.J. sued the school system to reverse the admission process changes, which they allege were meant to diminish the number of Asian students. That qualifies as discrimination based on race, outlawed under the 14th Amendment, they claim. In January, a U.S. District judge turned down the Coalition’s request for a jury trial and will instead issue a ruling later this year. Both sides will then be able to appeal, suggesting the issue will overlap another admissions season. A second suit is also in play. A bill before the Virginia legislature would also affect T.J., seeking to remove race as an admission criteria.

The move to eliminate racism in admissions processes in Virginia is mirrored at the national level. The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether race-based admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are lawful.

The case against Harvard accuses the school of discriminating against Asian students by using subjective criteria such as likability, courage, and kindness, a nasty echo of the 1930s when it was thought Jews lacked the “character” to be Harvard men. In the North Carolina case, the argument is simply that the university discriminated against white and Asian applicants by giving preference to P.O. other C. Don’t expect a decision before next year.

Once upon a time, Americans decided race should not be a factor in education, doing away with segregated schools and ending separate but equal. Somewhere we lost our way, to the point where we are leveling down, and twisty definitions of things like “experience points” have brought race directly into education again. Only this time we convinced ourselves that discriminating against whites and Asians was perfectly okay. That thinking is under fresh attack in the courts, and well it should be.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. You don’t have to go to Harvard, or T.J., to figure that out.

This whole left-religion about the concept of "equity", aka, equality of outcomes, has led us down this twisted path.

 

[Muda69]

10 Georgia State Senators—All Republicans—Want To Expand Government Control of Private Schools

https://reason.com/2022/03/09/10-georgia-state-senators-all-republicans-want-to-expand-government-control-of-private-schools/

Quote

Ten Republican Georgia state senators have signed onto a new bill that would prohibit the teaching of controversial race and gender subjects in schools. The twist, in this case, is that the senators are specifically targeting private schools, not public schools, and attempting to forcefully control what they're permitted to teach children regardless of parents' wishes.

This is not what it means to support "school choice" and "parents' rights," senators.

The bill, S.B. 613, was introduced Tuesday. Titled the "Common Humanity in Private Education Act," the bill asserts that "a growing number of Georgia's private and nonpublic schools have embraced curricula and programs based in critical theory. … Additionally some teachers and other personnel in private and nonpublic schools and programs have inappropriately discussed gender identity with children who have not yet reached the age of discretion."

The bill requires that private schools affirm that they will not teach a list of charged concepts that are associated with Critical Race Theory: that "an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously"; "that an individual, solely by virtue of the individual's race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex"; "that meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race"; and other similar Critical Race Theory concepts. It forbids teaching students that the introduction of slavery to the United States constitutes the country's "true" founding (the controversial and eminently debatable 1619 Project). It further forbids segregating classes or programs or excluding participation from them on the basis of race, national origin, or ethnicity.

After this section there's a chunk that reads is though it was cut and pasted directly from Florida's just-passed "Don't Say Gay" bill, but targeting private schools instead of public systems. It says "No private or nonpublic school or program to which this chapter applies shall promote, compel, or encourage classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not appropriate for the age and developmental stage of the student."

Just as with the Florida bill, Georgia's bill does not explain what it means to "encourage" discussion on the issue, nor does it define what discussion is appropriate for the developmental age of the student. And just like the Florida bill, it gives anybody who is "aggrieved" by a violation of these bans the right to bring a civil action against the private school and seek financial relief from the courts and "reasonable attorneys' fees."

Just last week, one of the bill's sponsors, state Sen. Carden Summers (R–Cordele), wrote a commentary for the Albany Herald praising a Parents' Bill of Rights that is weaving through the state's legislature, observing, "I am deeply thankful for the service of our state's trusted teachers to provide a positive classroom environment in which children can truly flourish and learn, but I believe that parents deserve the right to make sure their children are not being exposed to inappropriate material."

But S.B. 613 undermines the very idea of parents' rights. Parents choose whether to send a kid to a private school and, of course, private schools have to be responsive to parents' demands if they want to stay in operation. Summers' bill actually overrules the right of any parent who wants their children to learn Critical Race Theory or discuss LGBT issues with teachers. As with Florida's bill, it only recognizes the rights of parents to refuse these lessons. Furthermore, because of the threat of lawsuits, it also gives those dissenting parents the power to veto the wishes of all the other parents.

Not everything about the bill is terrible. Some of the restrictions against segregating students by race or ethnicity for various educational programs are directly connected to government funding and grants for private schools and compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But the reasonable part is buried completely by the very clear attempt to censor what is taught at schools that parents choose to send their students to.

This is a mockery of the concept of school choice. Parents who don't want their children to participate in these types of culturally charged issues should absolutely be able to send their kids to schools that avoid the topic. But it is a violation of parental rights to forbid private schools from providing the education that participants actually agree to by paying to send their kids there.

This is another example of politicians and activists attempting to overrule parents. It's just coming from the right rather than the left.

 

[DanteEstonia]

On 3/11/2022 at 5:25 AM, Muda69 said:

This is another example of politicians and activists attempting to overrule parents.

If parents want to have that much control over their kids education, they should just simply homeschool them.

Good luck with that. 

[Muda69]

1 hour ago, DanteEstonia said:

If parents want to have that much control over their kids education, they should just simply homeschool them.

Good luck with that. 

Hmm, I have known a number of homeschooled children that were intelligent, socially adjusted, and were able to get admitted to respected colleges and universities.

Just because you would be to lazy to homeschool doesn't mean others are.

And why shouldn't parents have some control over their children's education?

 

[DE]

1 hour ago, DanteEstonia said:

If parents want to have that much control over their kids education, they should just simply homeschool them.

Good luck with that. 

AND be able to keep the monetary "value" (FULL tax rebate) their state places on their child.

My tune has completely changed on home schooling.  I have yet to see a home schooled child not light years ahead of some public school kids.

Parents home school for a reason.

25 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Hmm, I have known a number of homeschooled children that were intelligent, socially adjusted, and were able to get admitted to respected colleges and universities.

Just because you would be to lazy to homeschool doesn't mean others are.

And why shouldn't parents have some control over their children's education?

 

Parents should have the MOST say in their child's education.  The one's that do, their children are usually excelling b/c the parents are supportively active.

[DanteEstonia]

On 3/14/2022 at 9:56 AM, Muda69 said:

And why shouldn't parents have some control over their children's education?

Because their kids will do nothing wrong. 

On 3/14/2022 at 10:21 AM, DE said:

Parents should have the MOST say in their child's education.  The one's that do, their children are usually excelling b/c the parents are supportively active.

Yeah, but those aren't the ones trying to run the school. 

[Muda69]

15 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Because their kids will do nothing wrong. 

Yeah, but those aren't the ones trying to run the school. 

So who exactly are these parents who are "trying to run the school?"

 

Edited March 16, 2022 by Muda69

[DanteEstonia]

2 hours ago, Muda69 said:

So who exactly are these parents who are "trying to run the school?"

Do you want names and numbers?

[Muda69]

30 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

Do you want names and numbers?

No, but they must all have a similar modus operandi.  What is it that according to you is making them want to try and "run the school"?

[DE]

2 hours ago, Muda69 said:

No, but they must all have a similar modus operandi.  What is it that according to you is making them want to try and "run the school"?

I see way more teacher's unions trying to "run schools".

[Muda69]

11 minutes ago, DE said:

I see way more teacher's unions trying to "run schools".

Bingo.

 

[DanteEstonia]

4 hours ago, Muda69 said:

What is it that according to you is making them want to try and "run the school"?

A feeling of inadequacy regarding their children, and their children's misgivings.

[DE]

1 hour ago, DanteEstonia said:

A feeling of inadequacy regarding their children, and their children's misgivings.

add the word perceived in front of inadequacy and misgivings.

Facts over feelings