I remember how it was -- JR
Democratic elites hate charter schools BECAUSE they perform better and give disadvantaged kids a chance
By Adam B. Coleman
We like to tell ourselves failure isn’t an option, but for decades, failure has been the status quo for the education of children of the working class and poor.
Failure was always on the table when it was those “other kids” who would suffer the consequences of mismanaged and corrupt local-government-run schools, and many fought to ensure that bureaucracy would keep their destiny one of destitution.
But when we give those castaway children a chance to excel in alternative institutions like private and charter schools, they quickly prove to us the only ones who failed were the adults who forced them to remain in educational squalor for so many years.
The New York Charter School Center just examined the latest assessments of third- to eighth-grade students and found charter schools outperformed their traditional public-school counterparts — especially in educating minority kids.
Students who attended city charter schools scored 7 percentage points higher on the English language arts exam, with 59% passing versus 52% in city Department of Education-run schools, and 13 percentage points higher on the math exam, with 63% passing versus 50%.
Black charter-school students outperformed their district counterparts by 19 percentage points in English and 27 percentage points in math.
Similarly, Hispanic charter-school kids beat their public-school peers by 16 percentage points in English and 25 percentage points in math.
With 90% of enrolled charter-school students being black and Hispanic and 80% of them coming from low-income families, New York charter schools have provided the children who were once forgotten in underachieving public schools an opportunity to experience economic mobility despite the efforts of pro-teachers-union Democrats.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such results.
Last year, a State University of New York Charter Schools Institute analysis found the largest disparity of educational excellence in The Bronx, which has dozens of alternative schools.
The number of students at SUNY-approved charters there who reached proficiency in English was 28 percentage points higher and in math 35 points higher than in neighboring public schools.
At the Academic Leadership Charter School, 84% of students were proficient in English, compared with just 31% in surrounding schools in District 7. The school is in Mott Haven, a neighborhood with a median income of $25,325 a year that’s 72% Hispanic and 24% black.
The elitists who plague the Democratic Party can only see as far as the landscaped shrubs at the entrance of their cul-de-sacs and refuse to acknowledge that the excellence in their local public school is not a reflection of what’s happening on the other side of the tracks.
They cannot comprehend the far-too-frequent situation of a child graduating from a public high school illiterate — because minimum standards of being capable of reading and writing are nearly guaranteed where they’re from.
We live in the land of the free but tell certain children that they shouldn’t be free to choose anything other than what isn’t working in education.
The Democrats in power claim to care about the lives of all children, but most do everything possible to uphold a system that puts union interests before a child’s hope.
They have no idea what it’s like to be a child who attends a school that ultimately doesn’t care if you pass legitimately or not and is too inept to rescue a child who is struggling to stay afloat.
I do, because I was this child.
I was never diagnosed in school, because no one cared enough to pay attention to what was obvious, but I displayed signs of dyslexia, which made my high-school learning experience horrendous and demoralizing.
In the last three years of high school, I failed and had to take summer classes to pass through the next grade and graduate.
I remember returning to school after my summer classes and finding nothing had changed. And no one cared about why I kept ending up in this circumstance.
As an adult, I now know why: These educators’ objective is to project an illusion of success, even if it means pushing stragglers like me across the finish line, to uphold the institutional status quo.
I wonder how many other children are like me, left behind because their struggles are an inconvenience for the people who place platitudes over results.
How many of us see these children who are raised in undesirable environments and view their existence as such as well?
If it’s American to strive for freedom of choice, then it’s anti-American to prevent our children from having a choice.
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Missouri School District Offers Coloring Pages on Preferred Pronouns, Gender Expression to Kindergartners
A Missouri school district is providing elementary-school teachers with coloring pages, asking children as young as kindergartners to choose their pronouns and draw the corresponding hair and clothing.
Webster Groves School District Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Shane Williamson emailed administrators a resource list of “Gender Identity and Expression Activities” in October 2022 in honor of LGBT History Awareness Month, according to public documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and shared with The Daily Signal.
“I believe it would be good to start our own resource sheet that provides ideas and activities that can help affirm and support our elementary students around the topic of gender identity and expression,” Williamson said in the email.
Williamson started the list and allowed others to add more activity resources. She did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
The list includes two “Playing with Pronouns” coloring pages from the Gender Wheel website for kindergarten through fifth grade and links to Welcoming Schools resources on gender-expansive classrooms and Advocates for Youth’s K-12 sexuality curriculum.
The “My Personal Style” coloring page asks children to draw themselves in the “style that feels the most like you.” The page features a gender-neutral child in the middle surrounded by both boy and girl options for clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry.
The other “Playing the Pronouns” coloring page includes a maze with a child of uncertain sex at one end and a text bubble saying, “Help Dylan find their baseball hat” at the other end, with “their” in lieu of either “his” or “her.”
“The Gender Wheel reminds us that we must see gender and bodies in a nonlinear continuum, and not in isolation,” according to the Gender Wheel website, which makes the claim that gender stereotypes have no basis in nature.
Jay Greene, a senior education fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, told The Daily Signal the coloring pages used by the St. Louis-area school district are inappropriate for young children.
“Asking kindergartners in a Missouri public school to reimagine their gender identity and list their pronouns is simply not age-appropriate and almost certainly inconsistent with the priorities of families in that community,” Greene said. “Even if we think certain topics can lead to productive discussions, not all topics are appropriate for all ages of children.”
The Welcoming Schools lesson plans, which the Webster Groves resource list designates as age appropriate for kindergarten through eighth grade, aim at “creating classrooms and schools that are free of gender stereotypes and gender norms that limit all children,” according to its website.
The “Lesson Plans to Create Gender Expansive Classrooms and Support Transgender and Nonbinary Students,” produced by the far-left Human Rights Campaign, include LGBTQ children’s book downloads, such as “I Am Jazz,” the story of transgender-identifying biological male Jazz Jennings; “Julian Is a Mermaid,” the story of a boy who wants to dress like a female mermaid; “Jacob’s New Dress,” about a boy who wears a dress to school; and “They, She, He, Easy as ABC,” a child’s guide to “inclusive pronouns.”
“A key focus of our program is to provide comprehensive resources for educators to teach about transgender and nonbinary people and to affirm all students’ identities across the gender spectrum,” the Welcoming Schools website says.
Other book recommendations for children kindergarten age and older include “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope”; “They, She, He, Me, Free to Be!”; and “Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story About Friendship and Gender.”
A winter-related lesson available for download about a “Gender Snowperson” for third through fifth grades asks children to draw their gender identity, sexual orientation, gender expression, and so-called sex assigned at birth.
Children learn about nonbinary butterflies in another lesson designated as appropriate for kindergarten to second grade classrooms.
“Introducing students to animals that are nonbinary, as opposed to the ‘female and male’ gender binary, helps them to understand that there are many genders and that nature displays great diversity,” the lesson plan says.
Martin Bennet, secretary and treasurer of the St. Louis County Family Association, which submitted the FOIA request, said the Webster Groves lessons are indicative of what’s happening in public schools in Missouri and elsewhere.
“The inappropriate lessons that are occurring in public education, along with the continual slide in academic performance, is why the Missouri Legislature and Gov. [Mike] Parson must make school choice a reality for parents in Missouri,” Bennet told The Daily Signal.
K-12 lesson plans from Advocates for Youth feature elementary lessons on “Thinking Outside the (Gender) Box,” different kinds of families, gender roles, and understanding that “there are some body parts that mostly just girls have and some parts that mostly just boys have.”
A lesson on pregnancy lists abortion as a pregnancy option. Teachers are to show the students a video on options, then say, “Let’s take a closer look at these three options and identify what a person should consider with each option. For example, with the option of abortion, a person should consider if abortion is available in their local area or would require them to travel.”
Optional homework outlined in the lesson plan undermines crisis pregnancy centers, more commonly referred to as pregnancy resource centers or pregnancy help centers.
“Research the phrase Crisis Pregnancy Center, which are centers that aim to block a pregnant person’s access to a safe abortion,” the lesson plan says. “Identify three key facts about crisis pregnancy centers that set them apart from health care centers.”
Advocates for Youth’s use of “pregnant person” implies that pregnancy is not exclusive to women.
Abortion is defined as “when a pregnant person decides to end the pregnancy by accessing a safe medical procedure or medication to remove the pregnancy from the person’s uterus.”
Webster Groves School District did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
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Texas Public University Closes DEI Office to Comply With New Law...But Here's What It Did Next
The University of Texas-San Antonio has closed its Office of Inclusive Excellence ahead of a law taking effect Jan. 1 that bars Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices at public universities.
But in an email to the campus community, UTSA President Taylor Eighmy announced a new office has been created using the same staff.
“I’m writing today to share a new path ahead that upholds the law while still advancing our core values to ensure a welcoming, collaborative and supportive environment where all faculty, staff and students can thrive,” Eighmy wrote.
As you know, Senate Bill 17 goes into effect on January 1, 2024 and charges college and university governing boards with ensuring that diversity, equity and inclusion offices are not maintained or upheld. As a result, effective January 1, UTSA's Office of Inclusive Excellence will be closed.
A new office—the Office of Campus and Community Belonging—will be established to enhance our university’s mission and create unique opportunities for faculty, staff and students. The new office will focus on three pillars: ADA & Accessibility, Campus Climate, and Community Partnership Bridges.
The office’s first pillar, ADA and Accessibility, will serve as the university’s focal point to coordinate and connect established campus-wide systems, programs and processes designed to support accessibility for our community members. The second pillar, Campus Climate, will take a proactive approach to maintaining a welcoming environment to enhance the student, staff and faculty experience. Lastly, the third pillar, Community Partnership Bridges, will work to increase access to higher education for community members across San Antonio. A plan to support this pillar will be implemented in the coming year.
The president said the new office will be staffed with those from the Office of Inclusive Excellence, though in “new roles with updated responsibilities.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 17 in June. The measure says an “institution of higher education may not establish or maintain a diversity, equity, and inclusion office or hire or assign an employee of the institution, or contract with a third party, to perform the duties of a diversity, equity, and inclusion office.”
Whether the university respects the law with the new office remains to be seen.
“I would be shocked and dismayed were they to seek to circumvent the DEI bans,” Texas Public Policy Foundation's Thomas Lindsay told The College Fix.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/12/29/dei-office-at-ut-san-antonio-n2632972
******************************************************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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