Friday, July 12, 2019






Report: Teachers Inserting Climate Change into Curriculum Without Training, Textbooks

Despite the unsettled science and evidence to the contrary, teachers without training or textbooks are giving lessons to U.S. public school students on the threat of manmade climate change.
An article from the Hechinger Report picked up by the Washington Post reports:

Teaching global warming in a charged political climate. … Their training doesn’t cover it and many textbooks don’t touch it but teachers are taking on climate change anyway.

The article focuses on a school in Oklahoma, where many students have parents who have good jobs in the flourishing oil and gas industry in the state, that promotes environmentalists’ belief that fossil fuels are the main culprit causing climate change.

Melissa Lau is a sixth-grade teacher in the classroom profiled in the reporter’s story, which was documented before the start of summer vacation. According to the report:

Ms. Lau, 42, has taught science for seven years at Piedmont Intermediate School, which is housed in an airy, modern building overlooking a wheat field and serves predominantly middle-class families, many of whom work in the oil and gas industry. For much of that time, she has sought to acquaint students with the basics of the planet’s warming.

On this next-to-last week of the school year, she was squeezing in a lesson exploring the link between increased carbon emissions and extreme weather events such as floods and hurricanes.

The article cites the “politics” in “ruby-red Oklahoma” and notes that teachers do get questions and “pushback” from parents over climate change lessons.

And it claims the oil and gas industry funds the promotion of fossil fuels in the schools and accuses lawmakers in the state of introducing legislation that “critics say would encourage teachers to spread misinformation on evolution and climate change.”

“Every year, we have to fight one or two bills,” said Lau, who was wearing a denim jacket and a “I teach climate change” button, according to the article. “I don’t get the resistance I got at the beginning of my career because it’s getting harder and harder to deny.”

On this particular day, the teacher showed the students a video that made an analogy between sports doping and climate change.

“Steroids can make it easier for players to hit home runs,” the video explained. “But it’s impossible to know if any single home run is due to doping.”

“So to assess the effects of the drugs, one has to observe a player’s performance over time. Same with climate change: Some extreme weather events occur regardless of whether humans are pumping extra carbon into the atmosphere.”

“Scientists can determine if these emissions are affecting the climate only by following patterns over time,” the video continued.

The article explains that in 2013, teaching climate change in schools got a “boost” when states could incorporate the Next Generation Science Standards into their curriculum, which includes introducing children to climate change and its human causes, starting in middle school.

“To date, 20 states plus the District of Columbia have adopted the standards, and many other states have embraced a modified version,” the article says.

At least one science education advocate confirms the lack of training teachers have to teach climate change.

“Climate and earth sciences more generally have been historically neglected in American science education,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a group devoted to tracking down “anti-science education legislation.”

“Lots of teachers feel they don’t have the content knowledge or pedagogical know-how to teach climate change effectively,” Branch said in the article.

And while Lau said she wants her students to have “hope” about the future, they sound less than hopeful in the article.

“Now that I know more about the facts of climate change, it’s a little bit easier to believe,” student Jewel Horn said. “It feels like more of a threat.”

“Now, I’m thinking that we’re in a crisis,” Horn’s classmate Dan Nguyen said, adding that he was a “little angry” because people “should be more careful of what they are doing, what they are using.”

SOURCE 





Betsy DeVos Is Right about Gainful Employment

Last Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced she was killing off gainful employment rules governing for-profit colleges. These Obama Administration era regulations deny federal student financial aid to individuals attending institutions considered not having enough attendees “gainfully employed” after attending school.

On the face of it, this seems like reasonable regulation. Let’s direct federal aid to institutions where there are positive vocational outcomes for most students. However, the devil is in the details, and I believe DeVos made the right decision, for two reasons.

First, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York says that, as of March 2019, 41.3% of recent college graduates are “underemployed,” meaning they are working in jobs that are relatively low-skilled and filled usually by those with lesser education, such as high school graduates. The underemployment rate of all college graduates is also a very high 34.1%. Some of these folks are making a pretty good income (as some relatively lowly educated persons get good paying jobs), but most are not.

The supposition that college has or should have a primary purpose of preparing persons for jobs is debatable, and beyond that there are respected economists (e.g, Bryan Caplan at George Mason University) who have argued exhaustively that little of the higher typical earnings of college graduates is actually attributable to employable skills gained while in college. College degrees are screening devices enabling employers to identify the best, brightest, most reliable and productive potential workers from the rest.

Given this, the whole concept of “gainful employment” is flawed. A school taking in high-performing high school graduates will likely have most of them “gainfully employed” a few years later, even if the college itself added little to the individual’s productivity. Moreover, many would argue that the “bottom line” of college is far more than getting good jobs. Good universities teach virtue, civic responsibility, and other things. Moreover, as Mike Rowe (of “Dirty Jobs” TV fame) and others have demonstrated, many persons with not necessarily high-paying blue collar jobs lead very satisfying lives.

But there is a second reason why gainful employment rules as constituted during the Obama years were inappropriate. They only applied to for-profit schools. They created an uneven playing field among schools competing for students. Public and not-for-profit private universities, constituting 90% or more of enrollments, were exempt from the regulations. Why? The real reason, I feel sure, is that the gainful employment rules were targeted at putting the for-profit institutions out of business, because of a progressive view that “people should not profit off of learning—education is an ennobling activity that should not be sullied by those with the selfish motive of trying to make a profit.”

To be sure, there were a fair number of “bad actors” in for-profit higher education, delivering little of value to students hoodwinked into enrolling in their programs and mounting sizable federal student loan debts. But the same thing can be said of those attending many public universities. Using U.S. Department of Education data, I quickly found three public universities where fewer than one-third of their students graduate within six years, less than one-third had paid down at least one dollar of their outstanding student debt, and where those attending averaged at least 20% less in annual earnings than what the Census Bureau says is the average of full-time adult high school graduates. If public universities were subjected to the same gainful employment rules, there would be an uproar as taxpayer supported institutions were effectively put out of business by the federal government.

The U.S. Constitution says nothing about education, but proclaims (Tenth Amendment) that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution...are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Constitutionally, the feds should not be regulating universities. The immediate solution, however, is to find new, non-governmental ways of financing college, such as privately funded Income Share Agreements, and/or to make schools accountable for student loan debt defaults (make them have “skin in the game.”) Then there would be little need for gainful employment rules, and a level playing field would be reestablished. Who cares about the profit status of colleges? What is important are results.

SOURCE 






Busing, No; School Choice, Yes

In the first Democratic presidential debates, Sen. Kamala Harris of California defended forced busing back in the 1970s as a civil rights triumph and criticized former Vice President Joe Biden for racial insensitivity for once opposing the policy.

We all want great schools for children of all racial groups and all income levels. But those of us who lived through this era know the reality of forced busing was quite different from the depiction of a civil rights triumph that Harris now says it was.

In the 1970s, this heavy-handed school integration policy — implemented across the country in cities from Boston to Milwaukee — was wildly unpopular with white and black parents. Fewer than 10% of parents of either race supported cramming 7- and 8-year-olds in crowded yellow buses and zigzagging them across cities and suburbs far away from their neighborhood schools.

You can Google busing maps in major cities in this era and you will see that the routes go here, there and everywhere as if they were designed by a drunken Soviet Politburo central planner.

The purpose was to ensure that black children in terrible neighborhoods could sit next to white kids in public schools. But it turned out the white inner-city schools that black children were shipped off to weren't too good either. And white parents were none too happy that the courts were busing their kids out of their neighborhoods as if they were laboratory rats in a social science experiment.

At that time, the social engineers — judges, politicians and political activists — thought that the quality of the school, the level of community involvement and the excellence of the teachers were less important than the racial composition of the classrooms. When you really think about it, that's a pretty racist position in and of itself.

Amazingly, and as is typical with liberal social planning, no one in government ever bothered to ask the families and communities affected what they thought about the policy.

But it soon became abundantly clear what people thought of the idea. This tumultuous era of forced busing caused widespread protests in the streets, a worsening of racial tensions and no improvement in student achievement or inner-city school performance. In my hometown of Chicago, race relations deteriorated, and the issue became a powder keg.

The goal, racial equality in education, was well-meaning, but the real-life policy outcomes were a setback for racial integration.

Today, some 40 years later, we know there is a better way to make schools colorblind — and improve student learning — without forcing kids to attend schools they don't want to. That is to expand parental choice options that include public, private and parochial schools and let the education dollars follow the children. I have visited and seen firsthand school voucher programs in Washington, D.C., and other cities benefit thousands of mostly black and Hispanic children. It is a glorious sight to see happy kids of different races and income groups together in schools that perform.

Sadly, many of the same politicians who still defend mandatory desegregation through busing of children also vehemently oppose allowing kids to get on a bus and attend schools — public or parochial or private — that parents do want for their kids. Isn't voluntary busing superior to forced busing?

Most liberals now oppose school vouchers, tax credit scholarship programs and even charter schools that allow the parents to have far more options in what schools their children attend. The political clout wielded by teachers unions has blocked school choice programs that would let minority parents have the choices that wealthier white parents do.

My former Wall Street Journal colleague Holman Jenkins reminds us in his latest column that during the height of the school busing experiment, rich white liberals pulled their kids out of the public schools entirely to avoid the turmoil that the politicians they voted for caused. Busing was for other parents' kids.

Herein lies the hypocrisy. Liberal politicians keep promising to give voice to the poor, the disadvantaged, the people of color, but they won't trust them to make decisions for themselves. They sing "power to the people" at their rallies, but they resist policies that would empower them. That is the real problem with our school system, and it is so easy to have superior and integrated classrooms if we would just give choice a chance.

SOURCE 




Thursday, July 11, 2019






How the Obama Administration Harmed Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault

Last week, the legal unraveling of the Obama-era campus sexual-assault guidelines entered a new phase. A student accused of sexual assault and subject to an unlawful, unconstitutional adjudication process filed a motion seeking class-action certification in his pre-existing lawsuit against Michigan State University. Rather than seeking to void the results only of his own flawed adjudication, he’s now seeking to void every adjudication where accused students were punished “without first being afforded a live hearing and opportunity for cross examination.”

This new motion comes after a wave of cases across the country that have invalidated and reversed the results of campus kangaroo courts — and these rulings are coming from judges across the political/judicial spectrum. In California, progressive state-court judges issued rulings that effectively halted proceedings in 75 campus sexual-misconduct cases, while California universities reworked their processes. Earlier this month, Amy Coney Barrett and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals joined dozens of other courts in ruling that university processes should face exacting legal scrutiny.

In fact, it’s hard to think of a modern legal policy more thoroughly repudiated than the Obama administration’s 2011 “Dear colleague” letter , which required every single public and private college that received federal funds (except for the few religious colleges that had opted out of Title IX) to adjudicate sexual-misconduct complaints under streamlined procedures that mandated lower burdens of proof, implemented a form of double jeopardy, and discouraged basic elements of due process, such as cross-examination.

Acting under intense internal and external pressure — and empowered by a #BelieveWomen ideology that dogmatically asserted that it is extremely rare for women to file false sexual-assault claims — universities encouraged women to report and prosecute cases under a system that was built from the ground up in defiance of generations of jurisprudence defining appropriate due process and in defiance of clear legal standards that prevent both anti-male and anti-female discrimination.

Much of the critique of university processes has focused on the plight of falsely accused students, and many of the cases contain facts so bizarre and extreme that it’s hard to believe that any fact-finder anywhere could have imposed punishment.

For example, in the Seventh Circuit case mentioned above, the accused student alleged that he was “not provided with any of the evidence on which decision-makers relied in determining his guilt and punishment,” his ex-girlfriend didn’t even appear before the hearing committee, he had “no opportunity to cross-examine” his accuser, the committee found his accuser credible even though it did not talk to her in person, the accuser did not even write her own statement or provide a sworn allegation, and the committee did not allow the accused student “to present any evidence, including witnesses.”

But as sexual-assault adjudications fall apart, it’s now clear that countless women have been victimized by the lawless Obama-era processes. The remedy for a lawless process is typically voiding the result of the adjudication, regardless of the veracity of the underlying claim. Even when a new proceeding is mandated, accusers are put through the immense challenge of an entirely new hearing. To put it bluntly, as courts properly sweep aside flawed adjudications, they are allowing guilty men to escape consequences for their actions.

That’s how law-enforcement scandals work. And make no mistake, the Title IX disaster is a form of law-enforcement scandal. When law enforcement cuts corners and violates the Constitution in its zeal to prosecute those it has already presumed to be guilty, courts can and do set aside convictions even when guilty men go free. There is no other effective remedy for systematic due-process violations. Perversely, that’s the dynamic the Obama administration helped create on campus. When it mandated campus prosecution without meaningful due process, it fatally undermined its own policy.

Due process, one of the greatest and most vital legal developments in the entire history of civilization, is not a mere inconvenience to be cast aside in the face of the ideological demands of strident activists. Basic elements — such as the right to see the evidence against you, the right to cross-examination, and the right to legal counsel — are indispensable to finding the facts when claims are disputed. They grant us a degree of confidence that real justice has been done.

While many statistics on campus sexual assault are flawed and exaggerated, there is a sexual-assault problem on college campuses. It’s heartbreaking to think that our university establishment, acting under federal mandates, has channeled real victims into a lawless process, ostensibly for their own good. It’s heartbreaking to realize, in spite of dozens upon dozens of adverse court decisions and in spite of proposed Trump-administration regulations that would mandate much-improved due-process protections, that young men and women are still being channeled into fundamentally flawed proceedings.

Until those flawed proceedings are eradicated once and for all, we will see all too many innocent students face punishment for alleged crimes that they did not commit. At the same time, as flawed adjudications are overturned en masse, guilty students will be relieved of responsibility for their terrible misdeeds. We’ll see more women face the trauma of relitigating the worst day of their lives through absolutely no fault of their own.

Make no mistake, due process is hard. It requires courage and resolve from litigants. It requires all parties to walk an arduous path to the truth. And even under the best of circumstances it’s imperfect. But there is no better way. It’s a deep shame that young women across this country have been taught otherwise. It’s a deep shame that many of these women will now see their abusers vindicated in part because their “allies” tossed aside centuries of hard-earned wisdom. They thought they knew better. But they did not. And we can now see that both accused and accusers have paid a steep price.

SOURCE 





Corruption over admissions at Harvard: Update

Harvard is firing its longtime fencing coach, Peter Brand, finding that he violated the university’s conflict-of-interest policy by selling his home to a wealthy businessman whose son was looking to apply to the university.

The Globe first reported in April that Brand sold his home in May 2016 to Jie “Jack” Zhao, whose son, then a high school junior, was interested in fencing for Harvard.

The property, a modest three-bedroom Colonial in Needham, was assessed at $549,300 and sold for $989,500.

SOURCE 






Australia-first study highlights benefits of early education for school children now and later in life

It does no such thing.  It is just the latest propaganda effort by a lobby group to get governments to pay for the child-minding of little kids.  The "study" is not a survey or experiment of any kind.  It is an economic analysis of previously agreed facts about early childcare.  The economists who did the report headed it up with fierce warnings that it was done for the lobbyists only and should not be used by anyone else.  They knew its severe limitations

The overwhelming evidence on the subject is that early education confers no lasting benefit at all.  Let me quote just a small excerpt from someone who has surveyed the evidence on the question:

    "University studies are often quoted to support the perceived academic benefits of preschool. What is not often mentioned is that whilst these studies demonstrate preschool in a favourable light when compared with an impoverished home environment; preschool environments and results do not compare favourably with the average home environment.

    Even Professor Edward Zigler, credited as “the father of Head Start” a well-respected American preschool program admits “there is a large body of evidence that there is little to be gained by exposing middle class children to early education…(and) evidence that indicates early schooling is inappropriate for many four-year-olds, and that it may be harmful to their development.”

    So what about the long-term academic effects of preschool? The longitudinal studies, often quoted to argue an academic advantage provided by preschool for lower socio-economic groups, actually also show that this “advantage” disappears by grade three.

    If preschool were truly beneficial in terms of giving children a head start, those places with some form of compulsory preschool should do demonstrably better academically. The evidence does not bear this out. The two states of America which have compulsory preschool, Georgia and Oklahoma, have the lowest results for fourth grade reading tests in the country."



Children who attend one year of early childhood education are more likely to achieve higher NAPLAN scores, which influences higher education outcomes and employment opportunities.

That’s the verdict from a new study into the economic impact of early childhood education, which highlights the academic and developmental benefits it gives to school children now and later in life.

The study, commissioned by The Front Project, and conducted by PwC, finds improved cognitive abilities that result from participating in early learning can be measured in later school achievement, educational attainment and employment.

The Front Project CEO, Jane Hunt said the findings highlighted the vitally important role early learning plays in the development of children in the short-term and in the longer-term.

“We all want our children to be more and have more than we had, and this report demonstrates that early learning is a vital part of making this possible,” Ms Hunt said.

“One year of quality early learning before school can hold the key to unlocking a wealth of opportunity for our young people as they develop and eventually enter the workforce.

“Finally, we have the research that shows that quality early learning is a key economic enabler that will allow our children to seize opportunities as the world of work becomes more complex.

“We know that 65 per cent of children today will do jobs that have not been invented yet, so the reality is that our children will need to learn how to learn – early education does this, and this research proves it.”

The landmark report finds that improved skills and abilities in children who attend early education was associated with improved NAPLAN results in Year 3.

Children with higher scores at Year 3 NAPLAN continue to do better all the way through to Year 9 NAPLAN, and then to high school graduation.

Ms Hunt said the data highlights the importance of quality early learning and the need for greater funding certainty from governments.

“This report emphasises the importance of governments committing to ongoing funding for the National Partnership Agreement,” Ms Hunt said.

“The report also highlights the need to address the variability of quality in early childhood education, particularly the quarter of services not yet meeting the National Quality Standard.

“As well as that, the report bolsters the argument quality early education should be expanded to children two years out from school.”

PwC Chief Economist Jeremy Thorpe said the research demonstrates the substantial impact early learning has on children’s development.

“Using the best available Australian and international research we were able to estimate the impact of early childhood education on early school achievement, and then the likely uplift in achievement at Year 3 and throughout the rest of their education,” Mr Thorpe said.

“The evidence suggests that if early childhood education puts students ahead at the start of primary school, the benefits will increase as they progress through the education system.”

Lisa Chung, Chair of The Front Project’s Board said the report reveals the enormous opportunities created later in life when we invest in the early years.

“Succeeding in future workplaces will require agile, lifelong learners, who are comfortable with continuous adaptation and a willingness to change industries or sectors,” Ms Chung said.

“It’s possible to train people in new information and contexts, but without teams who can learn and re-learn, innovation and efficiency suffer.”

Zac Hatzantonis, PwC's early childhood practice leader, added: “The report demonstrates that better investment in early childhood education will also help reduce escalating social welfare, health and justice costs.”

Via email. Media contact: Kate Hickey 0423 700 290

The full report: here




Wednesday, July 10, 2019






The Department Of Education Is Not A National School Board

Last week, Joe Biden joined the bandwagon of Democrats (started by Elizabeth Warren this year) promising to name a public-school teacher to be Secretary of Education if he wins the presidency. It’s an easy commitment to make in front of a teachers’ union audience, and it wouldn’t be all that odd to do it—several past presidents of both parties have named former public-school teachers to the job.

But the promise is another example of a thoroughly bipartisan misconception about the work of the federal education department. Even if they haven’t been former teachers, nearly every education secretary since the Department of Education was created in the Carter years has been someone with expertise or experience in K-12 education—whether as an educator, administrator, reformer, or policymaker. But the Department of Education actually has a lot more say over higher education than primary or secondary schooling, and its work has suffered from the lack of focus on higher ed over the years. If we must have a Department of Education, it could at least be run by someone who knows something about higher education.

The American system of primary and secondary schools is gloriously decentralized. There are about 130,000 K-12 schools in America, about three-quarters of which are public schools. The latter are governed by about 13,000 different school districts across the 50 states. These districts have enormous power over curriculum and staffing decisions, and the states have most of the remaining power over education policy.

The federal role in K-12 education is strongest in circumstances where racial or other discrimination triggers legally-mandated responses. Otherwise, the federal government uses some levers of conditional funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—a Great Society law that has been updated every few years since. Recent updates include the No Child Left Behind Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act. These have given the federal government more leverage over time, but its power is still greatest at the margins. Federal dollars are about 8 percent of K-12 education funding, and the Department of Education doesn’t really shape primary and secondary education policy.

We should all be glad about that. And a teacher who wants to influence education policy would be better advised to run for school board or for the state legislature than to go to Washington.

But unfortunately, the federal Department of Education does play a critical role in setting the direction of American higher education. Here too, its power comes mostly from the leverage created by federal dollars, but that leverage is immense, especially because of the student-loan system. And it has meant that the federal government has played a central role in driving the tuition inflation that plagues higher ed and in creating all manner of policy trouble besides.

Price inflation in higher education has been massively exacerbated by the basic structure of federal policy in this area, which might be best described as simultaneously subsidizing demand and restricting supply.

The subsidization of demand is done through student aid, which has been too open-ended and has risen with tuition, thereby creating upward pressure on costs. This leverage over funds has also given the Department of Education lots of informal power to drive policy through nudges and “suggestions” in a variety of areas. The Obama administration’s notorious “Dear Colleague” letters are a prominent example.

The restriction of supply, meanwhile, has been a function of accreditation, which the incumbent players in American higher education have used to restrict new entrants and new uses of technology. Accreditation is technically a private process, run by a group of NGOs, but because it is the means by which schools become eligible for students with federal loans and grants, the Department of Education has enormous power over it, essentially accrediting the accreditors.

All of this gives the Secretary of Education a lot of opportunities to improve (or to worsen) higher-ed policy—both by working with Congress to change the law and by working directly to change the department’s policies. Higher-ed policy is badly in need of reforms, getting those right could make a huge difference, and the Secretary of Education would be a key figure in making that happen. The Trump administration has taken some useful steps in this direction, but there is lots more to be done.

So a president who wanted to do something useful in education policy would be wise to appoint an education secretary who knows something about higher education, rather than just one who will say nice things about primary and secondary schools.

SOURCE 





Nation’s Largest Teachers’ Union Embraces ‘Fundamental Right to Abortion’

Over the weekend, the National Education Association adopted a new “business item” declaring its support for “the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.” The NEA is the most influential teachers’ union in the United States, and with more than three million members is also the nation’s largest labor union of any kind.

Here’s more from Business Item 56:

The NEA will honor the leadership of women, non-binary, and trans people, and other survivors who have come forward to publicly name their rapists and attackers in the growing, international, #MeToo movement.

Furthermore, the NEA will include an assertion of our defense of a person’s right to control their own body, especially for women, youth, and sexually marginalized people. The NEA vigorously opposes all attacks on the right to choose and stands on the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.

The statement goes on to assert that this new stance is necessary because “the most misogynistic forces, under Trump, want to abolish the gains of the women’s right movement.” The NEA’s change in rhetoric on abortion is a departure from several decades of couching its stance in terms of “reproductive freedom.”

In a document that aims to debunk the claims of its critics, the group once called the assertion “NEA supports abortion” a “deception,” and stated that it “does not have a pro-abortion policy.” Here’s more from that document:

[The NEA’s] stance on this issue is often misinterpreted and misunderstood. NEA’s policy statement reads: “The National Education Association supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom.” What this means is that NEA supports the current protections guaranteed under the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. This decision allows women to decide for themselves if they should have children—or not have children—and protects the constitutional rights of all women, whether they are pro-choice or anti-abortion.

Though in practice such a mindset would likely lead to supporting nearly unlimited abortion rights, this weekend’s sudden change in rhetoric indicates a desire to explicitly redefine abortion on demand as a fundamental right. Even more interesting is the fact that the NEA — a teachers’ union that ostensibly has no obvious reason to care about abortion policy or advocacy — evidently feels pressure to adopt a more radical stance as the Left becomes more dogmatic on the issue.

The statement outlining Business Item 56 doesn’t even make an attempt to articulate why the NEA has a stake in the abortion debate at all. It merely takes for granted that, as an influential left-wing organization, the group must necessarily champion the entire progressive agenda. This is a growing tendency on the Left, as “intersectional” thinking takes hold — the idea that each interest group within the broader progressive movement has a responsibility to embrace and advocate the particular interests of the rest.

If the National Rifle Association were to suddenly issue a statement declaring its belief that life begins at conception, and every human being has the right to life, it would be a cause for confusion and surely for immense criticism from the group’s opponents. But on the Left, such “allyship” among progressive interests is increasingly required as a measure of devotion to the greater cause.

SOURCE 





Supreme Court Set to Hear School Choice Case Next Term

Before hitting the road for their summer vacations, the justices of the Supreme Court announced last week that they would hear a major school choice case in the next term.

If the court rules in favor of the families that brought this case, it could pave the way for educational freedom and opportunity for millions of children across the country.

The case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, deals with Montana’s tax credit of up to $150 per year for donations taxpayers make to a scholarship-granting organization.

The scholarship-granting organization then provides scholarships to income-eligible children to attend a private school of their choice.

Recipients may use the funds at qualified schools, which initially included religiously affiliated private schools. Then the Montana Department of Revenue enacted a rule excluding religious schools, citing the state constitution’s “no aid” provision (known as a Blaine Amendment) that prohibits public money from going to churches.

Families with children at religious schools challenged that rule, arguing that it violates their federal constitutional right to free exercise of religion.

Religiously affiliated schools make up 69% of private schools in Montana. If this rule were to be allowed to stand, it would shut out a large percentage of schools from the scholarship program, limiting the options of families that relied on this assistance to send their children to the school of their choice.

The good news is that the Supreme Court set the stage for the Espinoza case with its 2017 ruling in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer.

In that decision, the high court held that the state of Missouri violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause when it barred a church-run day care center from receiving a grant to resurface its playground.

The state of Missouri argued that it was trying to avoid running afoul of the Establishment Clause, which prohibits states from recognizing an official state church. In doing so, Missouri trampled on Trinity Lutheran’s free exercise rights.

To be sure, there is some “play in the joints” between what the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses require of states.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that by singling out the day care center for disfavored treatment and “denying a qualified religious entity a public benefit because of its religious character,” Missouri went “too far.”

Roberts wrote in a footnote that the decision was limited to “express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing” and stressed that the decision “do[es] not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch disagreed that the ruling was limited.

In a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch concluded that the “general principles” of this decision “do not permit discrimination against religious exercise—whether on the playground or anywhere else.”

Shortly after issuing this decision, the justices instructed courts in Colorado and New Mexico to square their rulings in cases dealing with a school voucher program and a textbook-lending program with the Trinity Lutheran decision.

Thus, the scope of the Trinity Lutheran ruling remains unclear, and now the high court has the opportunity in the Espinoza case to make clear that states may not require religious organizations to check their beliefs at the door before entering the secular world.

If allowing a church-run day care center to compete for state grant money does not violate the Establishment Clause, then surely there aren’t Establishment Clause concerns raised by allowing families to use scholarship money at religious schools, for which donors receive a modest tax credit.

Indeed, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the court noted the “consistent distinction” it has drawn between “government programs that provide aid directly to religious schools … and programs of true private choice, in which government aid reaches religious schools only as a result of the genuine and independent choices of private individuals.”

On several occasions, the high court has rejected Establishment Clause challenges to “neutral government programs that provide aid directly to a broad class of individuals, who, in turn, direct the aid to religious schools … of their own choosing.”

The state’s Blaine Amendment also should not provide cover for preventing families from choosing to use these scholarship funds at religious schools.

More than three dozen states have Blaine Amendments, named for Sen. James G. Blaine, R-Maine, who in the late 1800s pushed for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting aid to “sectarian” schools.

As Thomas explained in the 2000 decision Mitchell v. Helms, “Consideration of the amendment arose at a time of pervasive hostility to the Catholic Church and to Catholics in general, and it was an open secret that sectarian was code for Catholic.”

Although Blaine failed in his bid to amend the Constitution, many states—some on condition of statehood—adopted their own Blaine Amendments.

Today, these ignoble 19th-century amendments often thwart modern-day school choice efforts as more and more states move toward systems that enable families to direct their child’s education funding to education options that work for them.

With any luck, the court will use the Espinoza case to heed Thomas’ advice that “this doctrine, born of bigotry, should be buried” and pave the way for school choice across the country.

The justices will hear oral argument in the Espinoza case during their next term, starting in October, and release a decision by the end of June 2020.

SOURCE 



Tuesday, July 09, 2019


10-Year-Olds Say They Were Suspended After Asking To Be Excused from LGBT Lesson

The thought police are on the prowl once more, reducing independent thinkers and religious individuals to a pile of embarrassment and shame — even if their targets are only children.

In South London, two 10-year-old Christian students say they were suspended after they asked their Heavers Farm Primary School headteacher if they could forgo participation in a lesson about LGBT topics during “Pride Month.”

Headteacher Susan Papas allegedly told both kids, who are of African heritage, that their opposition to the LGBT activity made them “a disappointment to the school,” Christian Concern reported.

The students, Farrell Spence and Kaysey Francis, were given five hours of detention and were suspended for a week

Kaysey was manipulated, bullied & unlawfully excluded by her headteacher for alleged anti-LGBT comments. Kaysey categorically denies the allegations and she is backed by children in her class.

The debacle started on June 20, after Farrell received propaganda-like LGBT coloring material from his teacher Alex Smith. When asked if he could skip the activity, Smith denied Farell’s request and told him it was part of the curriculum.

Later, Smith accused Farrell of saying “LGBT sucks and LGBT’s dumb,” however, the pre-teen denies ever using “homophobic language.”

During his next class, Farrell told a different teacher that he couldn’t “accept LGBT” because of his Catholic faith. He said this while sitting beside Kaysey Francis, a Pentecostal Christian classmate who shared his sentiment.

“Do you want LGBT people to die?” the teacher reportedly asked.

The two students responded “no,” but added that same-sex couples would be punished if they lived in their countries of origin. Farrell told the teacher that he was of “African Jamaican” descent and that “everybody is Christian and Catholic, so they don’t accept LGBT.”

Word spread quickly about the students, prompting headteacher Papas to allegedly harass the students and give them five hours of detention that day. “How dare you? You are a disappointment to the school,” Papas said, according to the two students.

Papas — whose daughter is lesbian and the School Manager — reportedly reamed Kaysey after the kids were put in separate rooms, saying, “How dare you say that you want to kill LGBT people?”

‘I didn’t say kill.” Kaysey responded. Papas shouted back “Yes, you did, and don’t lie” before beginning the detention.

The mothers of Farrell and Kaysey are fighting the suspension, noting that students cannot be suspended for “a non-disciplinary reason,” per the school’s own regulations.

Conservative Tribune, a section of The Western Journal, has reached out to Heavers Farm Primary School for comment but has not yet received a response.

SOURCE






Vindictive student wants police banned from Texas State University

Liberals are still doing everything possible to make life hard not only on conservatives and Christians but police officers, as well.

Texas State University student senate basically just voted to allow future bad guys with guns free reign on their campus.

Texas State University’s student senate recently held an “emergency meeting” to vote on a resolution calling on the school to ban its police department. The resolution was authored by one student senator who was arrested last week during an incident on campus involving the assault of a student wearing a MAGA hat, but appears to have not passed a student senate vote.

Texas State University student senator Claudia Gasponi — who authored a resolution last month to ban the school’s Turning Point USA group from campus — has now authored a new resolution to ban the university police from campus.

The resolution was drafted following the student senator’s arrest last week, along with three other students, during a counter-protest gone haywire.

The proposed legislation, entitled, “The Removal of Excessive and Abusive Policing Resolution,” calls for “the dissolution of the University Police Department,” due to the alleged “over-policing” on campus that “specifically targets and endangers people of color.”

“Texas State University’s student population is mostly people of color,” states the resolution obtained by Breitbart News, “and in order to be truly inclusive, the needs of people of color must be set as a priority and not an afterthought, especially in an institution that historically has disenfranchised people of color.”

“I’m not retaliating because I was arrested, I’m retaliating because I was violently assaulted and I saw several of my friends get violently assaulted,” said Gasponi at the emergency meeting on Wednesday. The student senator had referred to her arrest as an “assault.”

“I know that the university police department hasn’t done jack to correct these assaults that are happening,” continued Gasponi, “So — I wrote this [resolution], not because I’m upset I got arrested. I’m upset that we have a violent group on campus that is mandated and paid for by our administration to do the administration’s bidding.”

SOURCE






Haters attack student for wearing MAGA hat on Fourth of July

When 22-year-old University of Florida student Daniel Weldon sent a Snapchat to his girlfriend of his Fourth of July outfit — a Make America Great Again hat, American flag tank top, Trump pin and other patriotic regalia — she predicted he would get attacked.

Turns out, she was right. As Weldon grabbed a late-night snack on July Fourth across the street from campus he said he was surrounded by a group of college-aged peers who verbally harassed him, pushed him, ripped a Trump pin off his shirt, and tried to swipe his MAGA hat.

“It just goes to show there is a lot of people on the Left that don’t care or know anything about you, but they see one aspect of who you are and instantly have this blind hatred for you,” Weldon told The College Fix in a telephone interview Sunday. “It’s extremely disappointing.”

On the evening of July Fourth, Weldon hung out with a buddy in a college-area bar called the Rowdy Reptile without incident, but then they parted ways and he went to grab a bite at the Pita Pit on University Avenue. As soon as he walked in, he said, a group of about seven college-aged customers started taunting him.

The females of the group mainly led the charge, calling him a racist and hurling other insults, he said. Things also got physical. He said one female pushed him, another ripped his Trump pin off his shirt, and someone tried to swipe his hat off his head.

Weldon, who played as a linebacker for the Gators and is 6’1 and 230 pounds, said in response he only grabbed his hat so it stayed on his head and picked his pin off the ground. “My mamma raised me right, I am not going to touch a girl,” he said.

He did, however, tell the taunters that Trump will win re-election in 2020. The exchange lasted several minutes, while the physical interaction was fairly brief, he said.

“I have been doing politics on campus for four years, so it’s not like I am not used to people making comments,” said Weldon, a proactive campus conservative and chairman of the Florida Federation of College Republicans. “I wasn’t physically harmed. I was like, ‘Yo, that was kind of messed up.'”

“I ended up going to use the restroom and they were waiting outside the door for me when I got out, still making comments about me and flipping me off from outside the window.”

After the incident he spoke to a police officer stationed in Midtown, the college hangout area next to campus where this took place. Weldon said the officer told him it’s not the first time a student has been harassed for wearing pro-Trump gear.

The next day, Weldon posted about his experience on Facebook. He received a lot of supportive feedback, but was also questioned about filing a police report. At first he didn’t, because he was not hurt, he said.

But then he said he thought about it some more, especially the argument that while he was a “big guy” and could handle the situation, what if the next person couldn’t?

With that, Weldon filed a police report on Sunday. He provided photos of the perpetrators and encouraged officers to obtain footage of the incident from Pita Pit cameras and trace their identities through their purchases

SOURCE




Monday, July 08, 2019






Environmentalists in the classroom

It’s time to challenge the steady diet of bias, false information and alarmism on climate change that students are fed in and outside of their classrooms. Science and public policy analyst Dr. David Wojick has launched an important new project to do exactly that.

From kindergarten onward, our young people are repeatedly told that they, our wildlife and our planet face unprecedented cataclysms from manmade climate change, resulting from our fossil fuel use. The science is settled, they are constantly hoodwinked, and little or no discussion is allowed in classrooms.

They thus hear virtually nothing about the growing gap between computer model predictions and satellite temperature measurements; questions about data manipulation by scientists advocating the dangerous manmade climate change narrative; the hundreds of scientists who do not agree with the supposed “consensus” on manmade climate chaos; or the absence of any real-world evidence to support claims of carbon dioxide-driven coral bleaching, species extinctions, or the seemingly endless litany of ever more absurd assertions that fossil fuel emissions are making sharks right-handed, arctic plants too tall, pigs skinnier and salmon unable to detect danger, to cite just a few crazy examples.

Students are rarely told that the United States enjoyed a record 12-year absence of category 3-5 hurricanes making landfall between 2005 and 2017, or that 1944-1950 was the worst period in history for monster hurricanes hitting Florida. They’re not told the U.S. had 40% fewer “violent” (F4-5) tornadoes per year in 1986 to 2018 than in 1954 to 1985 – or that America did not have a single violent tornado in 2018, for the first time in history. Instead, they are misinformed that storms are becoming more frequent and intense.

They are rarely even told about the Little Ice Age, Roman and medieval warm periods, prolonged droughts throughout history, or the critical roles of fluctuating solar energy, periodic oscillations in Pacific and Atlantic temperatures and currents, and other major natural forces that have driven climate changes throughout Earth and human history.

It’s therefore hardly surprising that we are now seeing children marching in the streets and calling for “climate action” and “climate justice.” Worse, their teachers do not only excuse their truancy. They encourage it, giving course credit for these actions, or even saying student activism on climate and fossil fuels is more important than their reading, mathematics, history and other course work.

It’s ridiculous. But it’s real, ongoing – and often paid directly by our tax dollars or by tax-exempt foundations and activist groups whose views dominate and permeate our education and media systems.

In addition to what students are learning in their classrooms, they also receive “guidance” and “information” from “educational” websites that promote climate alarmism. Incredibly, many have been federally funded for years, and some are still funded by Trump Administration federal agencies!

For example, the “Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network” (CLEAN, as in “clean energy”) operates the CLEAN website, which is funded jointly by NOAA, NSF and DOE: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy.

It supposedly advances “climate literacy” – which is really code for the false belief that humans are causing dangerous climate change. CLEAN says it has over 600 free, ready to use resources suitable for use in secondary and higher education classrooms. It also boasts that it is the core of the “Teaching Climate” part of the Climate.gov website. This is Federal Government bias targeting children.

One of the key principles of CLEAN’s version of climate literacy is explained thus: “A great challenge of the 21st century will be to prepare communities to adapt to climate change while reducing human impacts on the climate system (known as mitigation).” CLEAN also says “Because the primary cause of recent global climate change is human, the solutions are also within the human domain.” In other words, we can now control Earth’s perpetually fickle climate, by adjusting its carbon dioxide thermostat control knob. In our dreams.

All of CLEAN’s biased teaching materials are based on this false premise. The reality is that dangerous human influence on climate is completely unproven and the subject of intense scientific debate. That only the scary side is being presented as settled science is a severe and intolerable lack of balance.

Dr. Wojick recently launched a crowd-funding project to provide alternative educational materials. His materials reflect the profound and well-documented debate that actually flourishes worldwide about nonsensical climate alarmism, the real (natural) causes of climate changes and weather events, the ways increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are helping plants to grow better and faster, and the actual causes of the sometimes crazy phenomena and creatures we encounter on this planet of ours.

The Climate Change Debate Education project or CCDE is still small. But it is growing steadily – and its GoFundMe effort is playing a critical role.

At this point, Dr. Wojick’s CCDE project provides two primary kinds of educational materials. One is skeptical videos by leading scientists. As of now there are 193 videos, by eminent scientists like William Happer, Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer, Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen. Wojick says his goal is to list 1000 skeptical scientific videos, clearly proving that the scientific debate is real.

Dr. Wojick and his project are also developing what he calls “gate breakers.” These are one-page, nontechnical summaries that explain a particular issue in the scientific debate about climate change. They are designed to be used to confront, challenge or question “gatekeeping” alarmists – such as teachers, speakers or politicians – who refuse to admit the scientific debate even exists.

Thus far, there are three gate breakers on the website, addressing hurricanes, the Little Ice Age and the sun’s role in global warming and climate change. But many more are on their way.

One interesting feature is that each gate breaker has a version that includes a Google Scholar search for more of the massive scientific literature on its topic. Dr. Wojick says the point of these searches is not that students can read all this technical stuff, but that they can see the debate truly exists. In each case, there are thousands of scientific journal articles that challenge the groupthink and borderline hysteria that dominates classroom and media discussions of climate issues.

The Climate Change Debate Education project is an ambitious and important undertaking.

It deserves the support of anyone who believes in the scientific method, integrity in scientific research – and having open, robust debates on dangerous manmade climate change claims that are being used to justify a rapid and complete switch from fossil fuels that provide over 80% of America’s and the world’s energy ... regardless of the tremendously harmful impacts that switch would have on our economy, jobs, living standards, health, productivity, housing, transportation and personal freedoms.

Companies that could and should support this vital educational program are too intimidated by the Antifa mobs arm of the $2-trillion-a-year Climate Industrial Complex to do so. That means citizens need to step forward. The future of American and global science, energy and prosperity hang in the balance.

SOURCE 






2020 Democrats rail against charter schools and flaunt big spending plans at education forum

Democratic presidential hopefuls railed against charter schools and flaunted billion- and trillion-dollar education proposals during a Friday forum hosted by the largest union in the U.S.

“I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious thing we need, public education,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the National Education Association event in Houston. “I know we’re not supposed to be saying ‘hate,’ our teachers taught us not to. I hate the privatizers, and I want to stop them.” He aims to eliminate all federal funding for charter schools.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said he would end federal funding for for-profit charter schools and freeze federal funding for all charter schools until a national audit is completed.

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke took a softer tone toward charter schools than some of his primary rivals. “There is a place for public, nonprofit charter schools, but private charter schools and voucher programs, not a single time in my administration will go to them,” he said.

Candidates broadly supported increasing Title I funding, investment in universal pre-kindergarten programs, and funding infrastructure projects for public schools.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said her proposal to subsidize early childhood education programs would be paid for through her plan for a wealth tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires. One analysis of her plan found that it would cost an additional $700 billion over the next 10 years.

Sanders brushed off critics of his plan to forgive all $1.6 trillion in outstanding student loan debt.

“I have been criticized for this proposal. I’m criticized for every proposal because I try to stand up for working families in this country and not the billionaire class,” Sanders said. “But on this proposal, if we can bail out the crooks on wall street to the tune of billions of dollars, we surely can cancel student debt in America.”

The White House hopefuls took aim at Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for her lack of teaching experience, with many pledging to nominate a teacher to the position.

“Betsy DeVos need not apply,” Warren said.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic front-runner, assured the crowd that he would not make his wife Jill Biden, a former high school teacher, his education secretary. “So the press doesn’t get confused, I promise I’m not going to appoint my wife,” Biden quipped, adding that “she would be a good one.”

Julián Castro, former housing secretary under former President Barack Obama, made a nod to the debate over desegregation busing happening in the wake of California Sen. Kamala Harris attacking Biden during the first round of presidential primary debates last week for opposing federally mandated integration busing in the 1970s.

“I would invest in tools like voluntary busing so that within school districts, folks are able to go to different schools,” Castro said.

SOURCE 






Restoring affordability to a college education

When my parents graduated from high school in 1936, a college education was too expensive for the son of a copper miner and the daughter of a plumber.

Eighty years ago, our country was in the middle of the Great Depression and teens took odd jobs to help put food on the table and pay the family bills. In those days no bank would lend money to college students.

Following World War II, there was new hope for veterans, The GI bill paid for veterans to complete their college or trade school education. My father, for example, graduated from trade schools in Seattle and Chicago and became a journeyman electrician thanks to Uncle Sam.

In the 1960s, the federal government introduced the work-study program allowing students from middle and low income families to work their way through college. I found jobs and fortunately didn’t have to borrow money to complete my degree.

Today, it is much difficult story. Student loans are the norm rather than the exception. As a result the student-loan debt has shot past $1.56 trillion spread out among 45 million borrowers. In 2018, nearly 70 percent of college graduates took out student loans and face their careers with an average of $30,000 in debt.

Growing student loan debt is a concern among Americans. “Spurring the free-college movement is the anxiety over the cost of tuition, which has risen at than double the inflation rate since 1990, while student debt has tripled since 2006,” The Wall Street Journal recently reported.

Free-college for all would cost a minimum of $75 billion each year if tuition was $4,400 per year, Quillette, an on-line think tank, estimated last September. “That doesn’t pay the bills even for in-state students at many public flagships. The University of Michigan, for example, costs over $15,000 per year for Michigan residents, and about $50,000 for out-of-state students.”

There are a variety of other approaches which can make higher education more affordable.

For example, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, wealthy anonymous donors pooled their money and started a free-college tuition program. It is one of more than 300 cities and states around the country offering a variety of tuition assistance programs.

WSJ reports since 2006, the donors contributed $124 million in tuition subsidies for nearly 5,400 students. The Upjohn Institute, which has been tracking Kalamazoo Promise, found that tuition assistance needs to be augmented with additional student career counseling in the K-12 system and other living costs for students.

Many small business owners in Washington State offer college scholarships and combined them with work and other benefits. Hopefully, the up-front funding offsets the need for loans and make it possible for students to complete their college education or technical skill training.

For example, in Seattle, Dick’s Drive-Ins offers employees who work 20 hours a week for at least six months and continue to work at least 20 hours a week while going to school to have access to a $25,000 scholarship over 4 years. In addition Dick’s pays higher than minimum wage, provides an employer paid health plan, and pays up to $9,000 in child-care expenses.

Other donors are stepping forward. Billionaire Robert Smith, founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, surprised Morehouse College’s 400 graduating seniors announcing his family is paying off their student loans. The estimated value of the gift was $40 million. He also challenged other donors to do the same.

Making higher education affordable is a national priority. The focus needs to be on approaches, which are affordable and effective for students and their families. The issue is large than just having the federal government provide free-tuition for all.

SOURCE 




Sunday, July 07, 2019


Yet another study shows school choice programs reduce crime

Schools are expected to prepare children to become good citizens. They can help achieve this goal by producing a well-educated populace and promoting strong character. But not all school systems equally contribute to the public good. Indeed, the evidence shows school choice does more to cut crime than residentially-assigned public schools. Here are the facts.

Yet another study just came out revealing the crime-reducing benefits of school choice. Researchers found that entering a charter school in North Carolina in 9th grade reduced the rate at which students were convicted of felonies by 36% and the rate at which they were convicted of misdemeanors as adults by 38%, compared to their peers in traditional public schools.

But this isn’t the first study to show that school choice reduces crime. There are now six rigorous studies on the subject, and all six studies find that school choice cuts crime.

For example, a study by researchers at Harvard and Princeton found that winning a lottery to attend a charter school in New York City reduced the likelihood of incarceration for male students by 100%. That’s right. Winning a lottery to attend a charter school in NYC all-but completely eliminated the chance of incarceration for male students in the sample. But that’s not all — the study also found that winning a charter school lottery reduced teen pregnancy by 59% for female students.

Another study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that winning a lottery to attend a public school of choice cut crime in half, a 50% reduction, for high-risk male students in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Two studies — conducted by Dr. Patrick J. Wolf and I — similarly found that students using the Milwaukee voucher program to attend private schools were significantly less likely to commit crimes than their carefully matched peers in traditional public schools by the time they reached 22 to 28 years of age. The 2016 version is forthcoming at Social Science Quarterly.

But why does school choice reduce crime?

Traditional public schools hold significant monopoly power because of residential assignment and funding through property taxes. Families upset with the quality of their public school only have three limited options: They can purchase an expensive new house that is assigned to a better public school, pay for a private school out of pocket while still paying for the public school through property taxes, or complain to the school leaders and hope things change.

Because these options are expensive and inefficient, there is not a lot of pressure for residentially-assigned public schools to provide the best character education possible. In contrast, private and charter schools must cater to the needs of families if they wish to remain open.

School choice puts power into the hands of families. And families usually know what’s best for their own kids.

But competition isn’t the only explanation. School choice could also reduce crime by matching students to schools that interest them, and by exposing students to peer groups and school cultures that discourage risky behaviors.

So, it’s about time we rethink the notion that residentially-assigned public schools contribute most to the public good. After all, every single study on the topic finds that school choice does more to benefit society by reducing crime.

SOURCE







SCOTUS Set to Hear School Choice Case Next Term

Before hitting the road for their summer vacations, the justices of the Supreme Court announced last week that they would hear a major school choice case in the next term.

If the court rules in favor of the families that brought this case, it could pave the way for educational freedom and opportunity for millions of children across the country.

The case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, deals with Montana’s tax credit of up to $150 per year for donations taxpayers make to a scholarship-granting organization.

The scholarship-granting organization then provides scholarships to income-eligible children to attend a private school of their choice.

Recipients may use the funds at qualified schools, which initially included religiously affiliated private schools. Then the Montana Department of Revenue enacted a rule excluding religious schools, citing the state constitution’s “no aid” provision (known as a Blaine Amendment) that prohibits public money from going to churches.

Families with children at religious schools challenged that rule, arguing that it violates their federal constitutional right to free exercise of religion.

Religiously affiliated schools make up 69 percent of private schools in Montana. If this rule were to be allowed to stand, it would shut out a large percentage of schools from the scholarship program, limiting the options of families that relied on this assistance to send their children to the school of their choice.

The good news is that the Supreme Court set the stage for the Espinoza case with its 2017 ruling in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer.

In that decision, the high court held that the state of Missouri violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause when it barred a church-run day care center from receiving a grant to resurface its playground.

The state of Missouri argued that it was trying to avoid running afoul of the Establishment Clause, which prohibits states from recognizing an official state church. In doing so, Missouri trampled on Trinity Lutheran’s free exercise rights.

To be sure, there is some “play in the joints” between what the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses require of states.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that by singling out the day care center for disfavored treatment and “denying a qualified religious entity a public benefit because of its religious character,” Missouri went “too far.”

Roberts wrote in a footnote that the decision was limited to “express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing” and stressed that the decision “do[es] not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch disagreed that the ruling was limited.

In a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch concluded that the “general principles” of this decision “do not permit discrimination against religious exercise—whether on the playground or anywhere else.”

Shortly after issuing this decision, the justices instructed courts in Colorado and New Mexico to square their rulings in cases dealing with a school voucher program and a textbook-lending program with the Trinity Lutheran decision.

Thus, the scope of the Trinity Lutheran ruling remains unclear, and now the high court has the opportunity in the Espinoza case to make clear that states may not require religious organizations to check their beliefs at the door before entering the secular world.

If allowing a church-run day care center to compete for state grant money does not violate the Establishment Clause, then surely there aren’t Establishment Clause concerns raised by allowing families to use scholarship money at religious schools, for which donors receive a modest tax credit.

Indeed, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the court noted the “consistent distinction” it has drawn between “government programs that provide aid directly to religious schools … and programs of true private choice, in which government aid reaches religious schools only as a result of the genuine and independent choices of private individuals.”

On several occasions, the high court has rejected Establishment Clause challenges to “neutral government programs that provide aid directly to a broad class of individuals, who, in turn, direct the aid to religious schools … of their own choosing.”

The state’s Blaine Amendment also should not provide cover for preventing families from choosing to use these scholarship funds at religious schools.

More than three dozen states have Blaine Amendments, named for Sen. James G. Blaine, R-Maine, who in the late 1800s pushed for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting aid to “sectarian” schools.

As Thomas explained in the 2000 decision Mitchell v. Helms, “Consideration of the amendment arose at a time of pervasive hostility to the Catholic Church and to Catholics in general, and it was an open secret that sectarian was code for Catholic.”

Although Blaine failed in his bid to amend the Constitution, many states—some on condition of statehood—adopted their own Blaine Amendments.

Today, these ignoble 19th-century amendments often thwart modern-day school choice efforts as more and more states move toward systems that enable families to direct their child’s education funding to education options that work for them.

With any luck, the court will use the Espinoza case to heed Thomas’ advice that “this doctrine, born of bigotry, should be buried” and pave the way for school choice across the country.

The justices will hear oral argument in the Espinoza case during their next term, starting in October, and release a decision by the end of June 2020.

SOURCE





Australian teacher education degrees should face scrutiny

People who have undergone teacher education degrees have been telling me for years that they are useless -- JR

Australian teachers are underprepared for the classroom compared to those in other countries, according to a recent global survey. The result indicates initial teacher education in Australia often isn’t up to scratch.

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) asked teachers around the world how prepared they were after completing their teacher education degrees. And on almost every measure — including being prepared to teach specific subjects, teach mixed-ability classes, and manage the classroom — Australian teachers reported being less prepared than the OECD teacher average.

While we should not rely too much on international surveys (because teachers in different countries may answer questions differently due to varying expectations and backgrounds), the TALIS findings are consistent with existing research on Australian teacher education degrees. The evidence indicates new teachers aren’t adequately prepared to teach reading or manage student behaviour — aspects of teaching that could hardly be classified as optional extras.

This should certainly raise questions about the quality of content that taxpayer-funded universities are delivering to teacher education students. And it follows on from concerning news that almost 1 in 10 teacher education students fail a basic literacy and numeracy test, which has prompted calls to raise the standard of new teacher intakes.

The TALIS survey also asked teachers about what school spending priorities should be. Australian teachers were more likely than the OECD teacher average to prioritise reducing administrative burden by recruiting more support staff — suggesting red tape for teachers may have grown unreasonably, meaning less time can be spent on lesson preparation.

Interestingly, Australian teachers were less likely to think reducing class sizes or increasing teacher salaries should be prioritised than the OECD teacher average.

This goes to show there are many policies to improve the school system we should consider before we move to throwing even more taxpayer money at the problems. We should start by trying to improve teacher training.

SOURCE