I remember how it was -- JR
School Choice Is Under Siege in Chicago
School choice is very popular among Chicagoans. In fact, more than 60 percent of Windy City residents support school choice programs. On the other hand, only 33 percent of Chicagoans are satisfied with the city’s public schools.
With this being the case, one would assume that Chicago’s leaders would support measures to increase access to school choice, especially among the city’s minority population, who tend to be stuck in the city’s worst-performing schools.
However, the exact opposite is occurring.
Earlier this year, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson teamed with public school teacher unions to kill Illinois’ lone school choice program: The Invest in Kids Act.
In 2017, the Illinois Legislature passed the Invest in Kids Act, which granted more than 50,000 private school scholarships to households that have incomes below 300 percent of the federal poverty level. Most of the students who have received scholarships resided in Chicago. More than half were black or Hispanic. In other words, the Invest in Kids Act was specifically designed to lend a helping hand to families living in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, where local public schools are failing to keep students safe and academic achievement is lagging.
According to a recent poll, 63 percent of Illinois voters supported the Invest in Kids Act, including 67 percent of Independents and 60 percent of Democrats. Nearly seven in 10 black and Hispanic voters also supported the program, which will end at the close of 2023.
After the Invest in Kids Act was officially axed, the Chicago Teachers Union applauded the decision, calling it “a significant milestone in the fight for anti-racist, gender affirming, pro-immigrant, equitable and fully funded public schools.”
Then, Johnson and his teacher union allies set their sights on the last remaining school choice option for Chicagoans: The Selective Enrollment Program (SEP). In a nutshell, SEP “aims to provide high-achieving students with a challenging academic experience and admit students based on prior academic performance,” according to the University of Chicago.
Presently, approximately 10,000 minority students and more than 7,500 low-income students are enrolled in Chicago’s SEP. They can attend 11 high-performing high schools.
Katie Milewski, who has children enrolled in SEP, told NBC News Chicago, “The selective enrollment schools are one of the shining stars of CPS. They are actually something that CPS has done right. And it needs to be supported.”
Unfortunately, the SEP is also on the chopping block. On December 14, the Chicago Board of Education passed a resolution “that it will be embarking on the development of a new five-year vision.” Oh, great. Five-year plans always work out well.
Essentially, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) seeks to eliminate selective enrollment based on the ridiculous notion that “selective admission criteria… ultimately reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity.” That is absolutely ludicrous. In truth, selective enrollment does the total opposite by allowing high-achieving minority students from low-income households to attend some of the city’s best public schools.
CPS’ new five-year plan is designed to demolish school choice by basically forcing all low-income Chicago families to attend the school CPS wants them to attend. This is all about power.
As CPS admits in the resolution, it aims to move away “from a model which emphasizes school choice to one that supports neighborhood schools by investing in and acknowledging them as institutional anchors in our communities, and by prioritizing communities most impacted by past and ongoing racial and economic inequity and structural disinvestment.”
After reading the entire resolution, I cannot help but notice the hyper-focus on non-academic, social justice-oriented crusades like the Equity Framework initiative, which aims to “create anti-racist solutions that address systemic disinvestment.”
Gee, how about focusing on teaching students to read, write, and perform basic math, which CPS has failed to do for decades? For far too long, CPS has been derelict in its duty to properly educate the next generation. Even worse, Chicago public schools are notoriously unsafe.
There is a reason why Chicagoans overwhelmingly favor school choice, and that is because the public education system is failing across the board. It seems to me that CPS is desperate. They see the writing on the wall, which emphatically says more and more Chicagoans desire school choice over the status quo. Of course, CPS, the teacher unions, and others will fight tooth-and-nail to maintain the status quo. However, it would certainly behoove politicians like Mayor Brandon Johnson to lend an ear to the people who voted him into office. Mr. Mayor, the people of Chicago want more, not less, school choice.
https://redstate.com/heartlandinstitute/2023/12/21/school-choice-is-under-siege-in-chicago-n2167802 ?
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'Satan Club' approved at Kansas high school
A high school in Kansas is embroiled in controversy after a "Satan Club" was approved despite a petition being brought against it.
Olathe Northwest High School, a school in a suburb of Kansas City, has been given the green light to establish a Satan worship/Satan Templist Club, according to Fox 4 Kansas City.
An Olathe Public Schools spokesperson stated, "the club application met the criteria to establish a student-initiated club and is now recognized as a student-initiated club at Olathe Northwest High School."
According to the school district, there was criteria the club had to meet before the application was approved.
One of the terms of the application was that the application itself had to be signed by at least ten students interested in forming the group, while additional signatures needed to come from a student representative and faculty supervisor.
The students that would be the leaders of the club were also expected to make a presentation to administrators about what the group would bring to the high school.
A federal law, known as the Equal Access Act, prohibits public schools from discriminating against a student-initiated group based on a message that is philosophical or religious.
A spokesperson for the district told Fox 4 KC that this means if the school allows one club, it allows all clubs if the application process is complete and the group meets the guidelines for recognition.
In response to the school's announcement, a concerned student created a petition online called, "Stop The Satan Worship Club at Olathe Northwest," in early December.
"This deeply troubles me and many others in our community as we believe that schools should be places of education and growth, not platforms for satanic indoctrination or controversial practices," Drew McDonald, the creator of the petition wrote in a post.
As of Tuesday, the petition had gained 81 new signatures, bringing the total to nearly 7,800. However, it was not enough to keep the group from being approved by the school.
"As an Olathe resident, taxpayer, and Christian, I am appalled that something of this nature was even considered for a Olathe public school. The administrators, executives, teachers that allowed this to happen do not have the children's best interest in mind. This needs to be expunged immediately," one person commented on the petition.
"We urge the relevant authorities in Olathe, KS - school administrators, district officials and local representatives - to reconsider this decision. We believe it is not in the best interest of our children or community," McDonald wrote.
The Kansas high school is now the latest school to create a club like this.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/satan-club-approved-kansas-high-school
************************************************Australia: Northern Territory Chief Minister Eva Lawler lashed over schools
Two of the Northern Territory’s most experienced educators are calling on new Chief Minister Eva Lawler to fix the schools crisis she failed to resolve when she led the Education Department, warning she was seen as a “same horse, different jockey” leader and had “no credibility” with Indigenous teachers and parents.
The former schoolteacher surprised Territorians last week when she was elected unanimously as Chief Minister by the Labor caucus, after Natasha Fyles quit over undisclosed shares in a mining company.
But The Australian previously revealed, during her time as education minister, one in five children was effectively unfunded, the majority of students failed to meet minimum standards of literacy and numeracy, and attendance rates were as low as 18.7 per cent.
Yipirinya School principal Gavin Morris said there was a “real danger” in the new NT leadership promoting the “same message” on education, particularly nine months before an election when the government’s focus tended to become shortsighted.
“It feels like we’ve got the same horse but a different jockey with Eva Lawler as Chief Minister,” said Dr Morris, also a councillor at Alice Springs Town Council. “Don’t just throw a different jockey on there and expect a change in results, it’s not going to happen.
“Given the state of education in the Territory, what’s the problem with the horse and why aren’t we addressing the underlying problems with the education system?”
The Australian’s NT Schools in Crisis series revealed an annual funding shortfall of $214.8m for Territory schools, with less than half of the NT Education Department’s $1.2bn budget going directly into school spending.
Dr Morris pointed to the “total ballsing up” of the $40.4m federal funding in the 2023-24 budget to improve Central Australian school attendance and education outcomes, of which, he said, they had “not seen a single cent”.
“The minister for education was totally left out of that conversation, and there’s been a disconnect between the NT government and the commonwealth, and we’ve had a huge fallout in terms of education … There’s no respect and recognition for the voice on the ground,” he said.
“Now that we’ve got an ex-school teacher and ex-minister for education in the top job, that whole sector needs to be held to higher standard … Ms Lawler needs to ensure that doesn’t happen again.”
Dr Morris said there needed to be more innovation in Central Australian schools to deal with disengagement, anti-social behaviour and youth crime. “Go and talk to people on frontlines who are innovating – Yipirinya is humbly one of those – and address the barriers to education and why kids are refusing to go to school in Central Australia,” he said.
“Also, resource schools appropriately to deal with that. One school councillor for every 500 students 20 years ago was acceptable, today that’s negligence.”
Gary Fry, who spent 23 years as a principal in the Northern Territory before he moved into academia in Queensland, said he didn’t hold much hope that Ms Lawler could turn around the “depressingly sad state of affairs” in education as Chief Minister.
“Labor has no depth if it’s seeking to elevate someone to Chief Minister of the most underperforming jurisdiction and the most educationally backward system in Australia, who denies that there’s even a problem in the education system,” he said. “Someone who has not acknowledged the true state of First Nations children in both urban and remote areas around the Territory.”
He referred to an interview on ABC Radio Darwin in September in which Ms Lawler, then education minister, said the Territory had a “very strong, very robust education system”. “Lawler doesn’t have any credibility for Aboriginal people in town, and people like me … She presided over the failed state of education and the economy,” Mr Fry said.
He said while one part of the story related to funding, the other was ideological. “How do you take children that are struggling and how can the education system liberate them so that they see the pathways in their life.”
Mr Fry, however, said appointing Mark Monaghan as Education Minister was positive and hoped he could “embark on an agenda of inclusive education, which means including Aboriginal people in decision-making, policy and program design”.
NT Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro said: “Eva Lawler’s mismanagement of the education system has resulted in an alarming decline in school attendance rates since 2016 under the Labor administration … The dire state of affairs continues with a concerning number of teacher injuries, unrecorded police callouts to schools, a high rate of student suspensions, and an alarming number of school break-ins.”
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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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