I remember how it was -- JR
New Book Details Teachers Union Internal Document Pushing Critical Race Theory in K-12 Schools
Aaron Withe’s “Freedom is the Foundation” explains why every American should be concerned about government unions using our tax dollars and union dues to push their radical ideology on the nation. This particular excerpt focuses on how teachers unions are an integral part of the Left’s agenda.
Withe is the CEO of the Freedom Foundation, which works to end the undue influence of government unions through aggressive outreach campaigns that help members leave their unions and litigation to hold unions accountable when they flagrantly disregard the law.
Teachers unions are writing the playbook of the hard Left. The Freedom Foundation obtained “Racial Justice in Education,” an internal document published in 2018 by the National Education Association. It illustrates, in shocking detail, the degree to which the nation’s largest teachers union embraces the tenets of critical race theory and shows how this neo-Marxist ideology serves as the fountainhead of the union’s support of a host of radical policies, from defunding the police to banning voter ID requirements.
This guidebook, which remained almost invisible outside union circles, was produced well before these noxious trends became widely known. But their discovery shows that the NEA was critical in laying the groundwork for the movements that nearly tore our country apart in 2020–21.
A mere two years after the NEA published “Racial Justice in Education,” the union’s evil plan came to fruition, as Portland and other cities starved law enforcement and CRT was shoved down children’s throats all over America.
A full reading of the eighty-page “Racial Justice in Education” leaves one stupefied. It also reveals that the NEA holds views on race that many, if not most, Americans and most teachers would find troubling or even repellent.
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Like a tornado from Hell, the NEA’s preferred policies swept over America in 2020 and 2021. Woke mobs toppled statues of everyone from George Washington to abolitionists, police departments were defunded and police officers assaulted, businesses were destroyed and the streets ran red with blood, illegal immigration reached record levels, schoolchildren were taught to hate their country’s past and to judge each other on the basis of skin color. … It was the realization of the NEA’s dream.
Unfortunately, it was a nightmare for the rest of us.
Union officials are careful not to talk like this in public—but “Racial Justice in Education” reveals their real agenda.
At the height of the insanity, the NEA’s 2021 Representative Assembly adopted several New Business Items (NBIs) endorsing critical race theory. When it became apparent that these would cause serious blowback, the union scrubbed them from its website—but as our [the Freedom Foundation’s] Max Nelsen reported, the internet’s Wayback Machine has a way of keeping embarrassing items from disappearing down the memory hole. These included:
—NBI A committed the NEA to eradicating ‘institutional racism in our public school system’ by, among other things, ‘increasing the implementation of … critical race theory’ and opposing ‘racist laws, policies, and practices; the over-criminalization of communities, students, and families of Native people and people of color; as well as the criminalization of poverty.’
—NBI 2 directed the NEA to conduct opposition research on—in other words, dig up dirt and smear—’organizations attacking educators doing anti-racist work,’ i.e., promoting critical race theory. If you’re critical of CRT, the NEA is going to hunt you down.
—NBI 39 directed the NEA to ‘fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric’ and to ‘oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.’
This was an NEA project, but the AFT [the American Federation of Teachers, another teachers union], under Randi Weingarten, has also put leftist social and cultural projects in the forefront. The Government Accountability Project notes, “Rather than focus on pension issues and protection against mistreatment, Randi Weingarten’s agenda has emphasized radical changes in education that do not serve students or teachers.”
As for serving parents … Hah! The teachers union big shots have come to regard parents as the enemy. They stand in the way of indoctrination. Those parents who aren’t on board with CRT or expanding the number of genders beyond male and female must be vanquished. Thus, the NEA’s EdJustice website encourages teachers to avail themselves of resources that urge them to establish “a private, virtual connection with an LGBTQ student that is not supported at home, so you can check in with them about their family dynamic and brainstorm self-care strategies.” This is an example of what the Government Accountability Project calls the effort by teachers unions to expand “the role of the school in the community and interrup[t] the traditional role of parents as the heads of the nuclear family.”
But parents, as we are seeing, aren’t going to stand for this displacement any longer.
Critical race theory tells us that the public education system, like all of America, was conceived in vile racism and remains inherently racist. You’d think this line of argument might cause the teachers unions some discomfort—after all, they’ve been effectively controlling the system for decades—but it doesn’t seem to have cost them any lost sleep. Their main concern isn’t raising the next generation of informed citizens; it’s indoctrinating the next generation of liberal voters.
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Many, many teachers disapprove of CRT and all its associated nonsense. But unions like the NEA and the AFT have fully embraced racial Marxism and an ideology that denies individuality and objective truth and views America’s founding values and constitutional government as obstacles to be subverted and thrown into the trash heap.
If parents object, these unions first ignore them, then slander them, and then demand that they be silenced.
The recent election of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Virginia shows the power of parents when they refuse to be silenced. Promising signs indicate that their example may be followed many times, in many places, and with equal or greater success.
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Ohioans Declare Independence From the District School Monopoly
Just in time for Independence Day, Ohio families can finally declare independence from the district school monopoly.
Over the weekend, Ohio lawmakers passed a state budget that expands eligibility for the state’s EdChoice Scholarships to all K-12 students. Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill into law on Monday, making Ohio the eighth state in the nation to pass a universal school choice policy and the sixth state to do so this year, following Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Utah.
Universal school choice is when education choice is offered to all students in a state, not just those who are low income or who have special needs.
Several other states also expanded their education choice policies already this year, including Alabama, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
Starting this fall, children from Ohio families earning up to 450% of the federal poverty line ($135,000 for a family of four) will be eligible for full scholarships worth about $8,400 (up from about $6,150 last year). Children from families earning above that threshold will be eligible for partial scholarships that will be adjusted based on income.
The dramatic expansion of education choice policies throughout the country has been an underreported story. Just two years ago, West Virginia became the first state to enact a publicly funded education choice policy for all K-12 students, allowing students to take some share of the money that would have been spent on their public school education and apply it toward private schools, homeschooling, or other alternatives.
Arizona followed suit last year when it expanded its K-12 education savings accounts policy to all students.
With the six additional universal policies this year plus expansions of more modest programs in several other states, more than 1 in 5 (more than 10 million) K-12 students are now eligible for education choice nationwide.
If North Carolina also expands its education choice policy to all students (currently, only 40% of North Carolina students are eligible), as it is expected to do, then nearly 1 in 4 students across America will be eligible for school choice. And if Texas finally enacts an education choice policy in a special session later this year, it would bump that national number up to 35% of students, or nearly 18 million of America’s 52 million K-12 students.
Moreover, these figures do not even include students eligible for privately funded tax-credit scholarships or publicly funded scholarships for students with special needs. Including them could yield an eligibility rate north of 40%.
Back in May, an article in The Hill asked whether the school choice movement is “about to hit a wall.” The article’s author seemingly consulted a diverse group of policy wonks and advocates ranging from school choice skeptics to school choice opponents, and the “consensus” was that “school choice advocates are quickly running out of states welcoming to their policies.” Apparently, no actual school choice advocates were available to ask their thoughts on the matter.
Meanwhile, policymakers in multiple states were busy moving legislation that would dramatically expand school choice while GOP primary voters in Virginia were busy voting for candidates who support school choice to replace ones who had not.
To paraphrase Aragorn from “The Lord of the Rings”: A day may come when the school choice movement hits the proverbial wall. But it is not this day.
Parents are still hungry for schools that align with their values and best meet the needs of their children—including those who live in the dwindling number of states lacking a school choice policy.
Policymakers in those states might soon find that the school choice successes outside their borders have served to whet parents’ appetites and created a demand that they ultimately no longer will be able to ignore.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/05/ohioans-declare-independence-district-school-monopoly
****************************************************Australia: Old-school skills for new teachers as education ministers take control
Good if it happens
Ministers from every state and territory have signed off on 14 old-school reforms, championed by federal Education Minister Jason Clare, to ensure that new teachers are taught how to be “confident and capable’’ in classrooms.
Imposing a tight six-month deadline, ministers agreed to develop practical teaching guidelines and amend accreditation standards for university teaching degrees by the end of this year.
From 2025, pre-service teachers will be banned from graduating until they have mastered the core teaching skills mandated by education ministers.
A new watchdog for teaching standards will check that universities have provided practical training for all graduates to teach reading and mathematics, regardless of whether they plan to teach in primary or high school.
Mr Clare said the reforms would make new teachers “better prepared from day one’’.
“A lot of teachers tell me they did not feel like they were prepared for the classroom when they finished university,’’ he said after his state and federal counterparts endorsed the teaching reforms on Thursday.
“Their university course didn’t prepare them well enough to teach things like literacy and numeracy and manage classroom behaviour, and that prac (practical placements in schools) wasn’t up to scratch.
“If we get this right, more student teachers will complete their degrees and more teachers will stay in the profession.’’
All ministers endorsed every recommendation from their Teacher Education Expert Panel, chaired by University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott, who began his career as a teacher.
South Australia's Education Minister Blair Boyer says workload issues are “number one” for teachers in Australian…
One in three final-year teaching undergraduates surveyed for the Scott Report complained that their degree had been “too theoretical and focused on teaching philosophies’’.
Some 60 per cent of trainee primary school teachers said they had not been given many opportunities to practise the explicit teaching of phonics in classrooms – essential for children to learn to read and write.
Only half said their degree had given them opportunities to evaluate students’ progress, adjust instruction and provide targeted feedback.
One graduate called for “less information on learning philosophers and more information on practical activities/lessons to teach curriculum areas”.
“More hands-on experience would have been more beneficial than constantly writing essays,’’ another trainee teacher said.
“I would have liked more instruction on behaviour management and how to build my skill set when dealing with children with defiant or destructive behaviours,” they added.
Universities will be given until the end of 2025 to rewrite their 300 existing teaching courses to include the core content mandated by the ministers.
The reforms will also force universities to reveal publicly the proportion of graduates with an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank above 80 – in the top 20 per cent of academic achievement.
Core content, to be compulsory for all teaching degrees, will include detailed explanations of how children learn; lesson planning; step-by-step “explicit instruction”; student assessment; and the provision of “specific, honest, constructive and clear’’ feedback to students and parents.
Phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension will be the basis of reading instruction. And all teachers must learn the six strands of mathematics – numbers, algebra, geometry, measurement, statistics, and probability.
Universities will have to teach graduates to identify “common neuromyths’’, which the Scott Report cites as the theories that there are multiple types of intelligence, and that children’s learning can be influenced by the left or right side of the brain.
Education degrees will teach how a student’s brain develops from early childhood through to adulthood, and the limits of working memory and “cognitive overload’’ for children.
Young teachers will learn the old-school skill of explicit instruction” by clearly explaining to children what they are expected to learn, chunked into small and manageable tasks.
Teachers will be taught to plan a sequence of lessons that include repetition and practice, so that children can retrieve their past learning and consolidate it into long-term memory.
Universities must ensure that teachers can provide worked examples for lessons, and wait until children are proficient before expecting them to solve problems on their own.
“Practices should include the use of structured lessons, clear and explicit instruction, effective questioning that encourages participation, reducing cognitive load and use of specific and positive feedback that acknowledges student effort,’’ the new standards state.
To be able to keep classes under control, teachers must be taught to “effectively model desired behaviour, such as respectful interactions, being organised, and being on time, to prompt positive behaviour by setting and reinforcing expectations”.
Acknowledging the increasing complexity of modern classrooms, all teaching degrees must include Aboriginal and Torres Strait history and culture, cultural diversity, and teaching methods tailored to children with common disabilities, such as autism.
The education ministers also agreed to establish an Initial Teacher Education Quality Assurance board that will report back to them every year on the quality and consistency of every teaching degree.
Each university will have to report publicly on the proportion students in teaching degrees from First Nations, remote area, migrant or low-income backgrounds – as well as course drop-out rates and employment outcomes for graduates.
State governments will be able to slap conditions on the accreditation of university courses that fail to comply with the guidelines – a move that could render graduates unemployable.
But universities will be able to apply for $5m in grants to get their teaching degrees up to scratch, with a $2.5m bonus for top-performing institutions to share their expertise.
The ministers agreed to provide more classroom training for undergraduates, to be mentored by experienced teachers who could count the time spent supervising towards their hours of professional development.
They also agreed to a national ban on mobile phones in class.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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