Iowa Leads Way on Education Freedom

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, families bear the twin burdens of inflation and indoctrination.

Parents continue to witness their children being taught divisive, radical ideologies that portray their country as intrinsically racist, place social justice above fundamental subjects such as reading and math, and even divide children by race. All this while academic proficiency drops off a cliff.

The soaring costs of living make alternatives such as private school or homeschooling increasingly unattainable for middle- and working-class families. But now, after a decade of battling the failing public education system, parents finally have a reason to hope.

Just two years ago, not a single state had universal school choice. Today, nine do.

To understand how groundbreaking this education renaissance is, just look at the state of Iowa.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, began 2023 by signing into law the Students First Act. This measure allows all Iowa families to receive funds in an education savings account, or ESA, to attend the school of their choice.

By the 2025-26 school year, every single child in Iowa will have access to an ESA to craft a learning option that works for them. It’s not just a discount—this year, the ESA amount is approximately $7,500 per child, which covers the entirety of private tuition for most elementary school students in the state.

Any leftover funds may be used to pay for other education-related services and products, such as tutors and textbooks. This marks a much-needed reprieve for parents who have watched their children struggle within an outdated system that lacks accountability and flexibility.

Iowa’s law is the nation’s third universal education choice program, following closely behind West Virginia and Arizona’s ESA expansions in 2022. Six other states have since adopted similar—and, in some cases, more expansive—policies this year: Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina.

But Reynolds didn’t stop at school choice, either. She also signed into law a commonsense parental rights bill, SF 496, which prohibits instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools in grades K-6 and forbids school libraries from stocking sexually explicit materials. The law also requires libraries to post their card catalogs online for the sake of transparency.

Critically, the Iowa law incorporated components of the Given Name Act, prohibiting schools from hiding information from parents about a child going by a different name or pronoun at school.

In a separate measure, the governor signed into law a bill that provides flexibility to traditional public schools, removing some regulations pertaining to teacher and librarian hiring and burdensome reporting requirements to the state.

For making these groundbreaking reforms, the Hawkeye State won The Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Education Freedom Award. Due to the new laws pertaining to transparency, teacher freedom, and school choice, Iowa jumped an impressive 13 spots on Heritage’s Education Freedom Report Card relative to the state’s 2022 standing—the largest improvement of any state in the country. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news and commentary outlet.)

Florida retained its first-place position, and Arizona stood strong in second place, thanks in large part to the options for universal education savings accounts in both states.

Rounding out Heritage’s top five states for education freedom were Utah, Arkansas, and Indiana, all of which contain universal or near-universal school choice for families.

On the flip side, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Oregon rounded out the worst-performing five states in Heritage’s ranking.

More states, including Texas, are recognizing the pivotal role played by school choice in maximizing academic transparency and accountability. Reynolds is among those leaders who recognize that these reforms go hand-in-glove.

Transparency and parental involvement in a child’s education are vital, but without meaningful choices, they lack teeth. The ultimate accountability lies in the power of families to direct their child’s education if their current, government-assigned school fails to meet their needs.

Parents should be in the driver’s seat of their children’s education. Yet right now, too many families are confined to a system that doesn’t align with their values or the specific needs of their children.

Iowa is among those states that are breaking away from the monopoly enjoyed by the education establishment. And Iowa’s road map is now available for more states to follow.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/13/iowa-leads-way-on-education-freedom

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MIT Has a Pro-Hamas, Anti-Semitic Problem

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has a student body that is one-third foreign nationals. They flock to MIT for the reputedly excellent math and engineering programs. However, an inexcusable clash started by pro-Palestinian (read: pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic) protesters, who physically prevented Jewish students from getting to class, turned more volatile with the arrival of counterprotesters. The administration feared that violence would erupt, and so it gave all the students a choice: Leave now or get suspended.

Many student did comply. Those who did not participated in "talks" with the admin and staff. After threats of suspension were made and the students didn't obey, one would think that punishment would be carried out immediately.

Not so.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth later wrote an explanation: "Members of my team have been in dialogue with students all day. Because we later heard serious concerns about collateral consequences for the students, such as visa issues, we have decided, as an interim action, that the students who remained after the deadline will be suspended from non-academic campus activities. The students will remain enrolled at MIT and will be able to attend academic classes and labs."

In other words, because these students would lose their visa and be deported, MIT lessened the punishment and allowed them to continue to go to classes with the Jewish students against whom they hold such animus.

This is what has been allowed to continue in MIT classrooms because these "protesters" weren't punished. It's been a week since the initial volatile protest, and they are using their privilege of still being allowed to attend classes to interrupt students trying to learn and teachers trying to teach. There are no real consequences because MIT is afraid the malcontents will be deported. The exasperated expressions on the students' faces in the linked video says it all.

It prompts the question: Just how many of these anti-Semitic protesters are foreign nationals? If one were to judge by Kornbluth's decision, the answer must be many or most.

If that's the case, then MIT really is failing its student population in extraordinary ways. Foreign nationals are not American citizens; they have to abide by the same rules as all the other students. If they cannot abide by those rules, they should not attend school in the U.S. MIT has let these dangerous and threatening students reign as the cry-bullies they are, and the tiny Jewish population (and those other students who are just there to learn) are subject to the tyranny and whims of these anti-Semites and the apathy of their administration. It is shameful.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/102122-mit-has-a-pro-hamas-anti-semitic-problem-2023-11-14

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Moms for Liberty Co-Founder Has a Message for Teacher’s Union Boss Mocking Parental Rights

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice laid out her strategy for the “David and Goliath” struggle to win school board elections in the face of the teachers unions’ stranglehold, following another historic election cycle in which the 3-year-old organization racked up 50 wins, but fell short in many other races.

“We got 50 people elected to school board [seats last] Tuesday, which is really exciting,” Justice told “The Daily Signal Podcast” in an interview Thursday.

While some news outlets focused on the many races in which Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidates lost, Justice emphasized the wins, putting them in context.

“Moms for Liberty didn’t exist three years ago,” she noted. “For us to have now been able to elect in 2022 and 2023 365 school board members who are liberty-minded individuals standing up for parental rights, putting the focus back on the basics in American public education, stopping this woke indoctrination that we’ve been seeing—it’s very exciting.”

Justice pushed back against criticism from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who mocked Moms for Liberty’s supposed failures.

“My answer back is those are 50 seats that we wouldn’t have won if we didn’t exist, and that Randi should hold my beer, because we’re just getting started,” she said.

The Moms for Liberty co-founder noted that 83% of the school board candidates her organization endorsed had not previously run for office.

She also mentioned the money. “The teachers unions spend a lot of money in school board races,” she said. Since 2023 was an off-year election, the races were “about local politics, local elections, and teachers unions have really run the game on these elections for a very, very long time.”

“It is a bit of a David-and-Goliath moment in American politics, but we’re really excited because we’re getting the word out,” Justice said.

She laid out her takeaways from the election, a game plan to win even more seats going forward.

“The takeaways are: Let’s teach people how to run campaigns, how to run for office, how to help their friends run for office, but also, financially, we need to be able to support these races,” the Moms for Liberty co-founder said. She mentioned her organization’s political action committee and super PAC.

“In Florida in 2022, when we were able to put just a little bit of money into the races, I think we spent about $50,000 through a political committee in Florida in 2022,” she said. “Our success rate was 80%. So, it’s really a learning moment for us in 2023, and we’re excited for 2023.”

Justice emphasized the resilience of her local Moms for Liberty leaders. She recalled one chapter leader in whose county every Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidate lost, but who decided she wasn’t going to give up.

“That’s the message of Moms for Liberty: We’re just getting started,” she said. “Of course, we’d like to win all the races, but 50 seats on a school board in a single day is nothing to turn your nose up at.”

She emphasized the importance of keeping a “joyful warrior spirit because our kids are watching us.”

“Am I going to be angry and frustrated and give up, or am I going to model perseverance and be relentless in the pursuit of defending America and our children?” she asked.

Justice also addressed Moms for Liberty’s key parental rights issues, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic gave parents the ability “to see behind the education curtain.” Parents raised concerns about falling education standards, top-down pandemic requirements, and what she called “indoctrination.”

“They came to the school districts and the school boards. They were shut down,” she recalled. “The idea that people within the community couldn’t go and have their voices heard in front of elected officials” was infuriating.

Justice raised the alarm about Marxist critical theory—which analyzes society along oppressor-oppressed lines—being “laced into every element in our children’s day.” She also lamented that reading standards have fallen drastically.

“There is no future for America with an illiterate society,” she said.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/14/david-goliath-moms-liberty-co-founder-lays-battle-plan-school-boards-election-results

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