I remember how it was -- JR
Biden Says Kids Belong to Their Teachers
Schools are becoming indoctrination factories, trying to turn children against their country and their own parents’ values. It’s what the teachers unions intend.
Amazingly, that’s just fine with President Joe Biden, who told a gathering of teachers and union bigwigs on April 27 that the kids are “yours when they’re in the classroom.” That wasn’t just a Biden stumble. He repeated it for emphasis: “They are all our children …. They are not somebody else’s children.”
Sorry, Joe. But parents have a right to know what their children are being taught, and to set limits. State legislators in at least 12 states have introduced bills requiring teachers to post teaching materials, including books and videos, on a website for parents to inspect before their kids see them.
Good teachers will have no problem with that. But ideologically driven teachers, as well as the unions, are fighting back. That includes Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. As she launched Teacher Appreciation Week—and most teachers do deserve our appreciation—Weingarten smeared classroom transparency requests as the work of political “extremists.”
Concerned parents are not political extremists, but Biden is joining the attack against transparency, parroting the unions. He and most Democrats in Congress are teachers union flunkies. Democrats delivered hundreds of billions in COVID relief to school districts, including $46 billion to teach critical race theory. By the way, that included $9 billion for CRT in New York schools.
Biden also kowtowed to the unions to prolong school closings and masking, and then allowed the unions to dictate what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would require to reopen schools.
As a candidate, Biden vowed to end federal support for charter schools, and his new regulations have that obvious intent—another obsequious gesture to the unions.
Weingarten and National Education Association President Rebecca Pringle probably have more power in the Biden administration than any senator or cabinet member. That would be fine if they were wielding their clout to ensure children acquire strong reading and math skills. But that’s not their agenda.
The American Federation of Teachers website shows the union is more committed to political activism than reading and STEM instruction. The site urges visitors to “take action” on student debt, voting rights and passing the Equality Act. But it never mentions that fewer than half of New York City’s third to eighth graders can read at grade level. Or that, overall, students in the U.S. rank behind many other countries in math. No call to action there.
The AFT website also declares that the U.S. is facing health, economic and racial challenges “all made worse because of Donald Trump.” How can the 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020 entrust their children’s education to an organization so politically biased?
Joining the unions to fight a parent’s right to know is none other than the Democratic Party. No surprise. The unions give 94 percent of their money to Democratic candidates and parties, according to data-tracking nonprofit Open Secrets.
Tit for tat. Democrats are demonizing Republicans who support curriculum transparency. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) calls them “mean, hateful and spiteful.” Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. says Republicans will be forced “to own the meanness.” Meanness for what? Keeping discussions of sex out of elementary school classrooms?
Murphy lamely predicts Republicans backing curriculum transparency will lose because “it’s just not true that it’s popular to pick on gay kids. That’s a willful distortion.
Truth is, no one advocates bullying gay kids. All children deserve kindness. But that doesn’t mean kindergarteners should be instructed in how boys can transition to become girls, or vice versa. Nearly half of teachers agree these issues don’t belong in the classroom, according to an Education Week poll.
Biden often jokes that he sleeps with a teachers union member—the same one—every night: First Lady Jill Biden. Cute, but he shouldn’t sell out to the rest. Parents care more than anyone else about their own children. They should decide what schools teach, not the far-left ideologues running the teachers unions.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-says-kids-belong-to-their-teachers_4448166.html
*************************************************Men Drop Out of College But the Gender Pay Gap Persists
The Wall Street Journal reports that three-fourths of the pandemic-driven college dropouts in the United States were men. These numbers would seem to depict a crisis for men that predicts lower future earning power. If the earnings for men are going down, does that mean the gender wage gap will close? For many reasons, the answer appears to be no. Kevin Carey of the New York Times explains some of the reasons why the gender wage gap persists -and why men in the United States, in general, are not in a pandemic-driven education crisis:
The gender imbalance in college enrollment and graduation is not new. Carey notes that women’s enrollment in college surged during the 1970s, but “women have outnumbered men on campus since the late 1970s. . . . The numbers haven’t changed much in recent decades.”
Male enrollment in public and private nonprofit four-year colleges dropped more from 2018 to 2019-before the pandemic-than from 2019 to 2020.
The raw numbers do not take into account that some college degrees are worth more than others. For example, men still dominate in fields like technology and engineering, which offer some of the highest salaries.
There are still some good-paying jobs available to men without college degrees, but there are relatively few for women. Many female-dominated jobs don’t pay well. As women overcome obstacles and move into male-dominated fields, the pay usually goes down in those fields.
Data reflects a class difference: students from higher socioeconomic classes are less likely to drop out of college.
Last year, women were less likely than men to leave community college despite their disproportionate responsibility for caregiving and domestic work during the pandemic.
There is structural admissions discrimination by selective colleges that do not want a gender imbalance in their enrollment. While women apply to colleges in larger numbers than men, their applications are often rejected to maintain a gender balance. Carey cites a dean of admissions at Kenyon College as saying, “Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns out, fewer females find your campus attractive.”
Carey points out that the gender pay gap has been persistent despite the higher levels of enrollment and graduation from college by women for decades. Obviously, the problem is not just about whether or not you have a college degree. The problem is about societal attitudes about work and family, discriminatory policies and procedures that limit women’s access, and the lack of affordable childcare.
Just today, my cousin called to tell me how surprised she was when a woman plumber showed up at her door today to fix a plumbing problem in her house. The fact that it is still so unusual to see a woman plumber says a lot about what we consider “women’s work” versus “men’s work.” We still have a long way to go to even this playing field.
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Texas Governor Calls for School Choice for Every Child in Lone Star State
The image of Lucy yanking away the football from Charlie Brown has been invoked for years as a metaphor for Texas’ relationship with school choice.
But is the Lone Star State finally about to connect?
On Monday night, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called on the Legislature to allow education dollars to follow children to learning options of their parents’ choice, including to private schools.
“Empowering parents means giving them the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school, or private school with state funding following the student,” the governor said, adding that school choice “is going to give all Texas children a better chance to succeed.”
Abbott’s leadership on this important issue is a major, positive step for educational freedom in Texas. The state’s policymakers should now heed the call and establish universal education savings accounts for all Texas children.
Every child should have the opportunity for a great K-12 experience—and the chance to succeed in school and in life. Education savings accounts can offer this on-demand education experience for children from all walks of life.
The governor’s proposal has come at the right time.
Parents are already signaling that assigned public schools are not meeting their children’s needs. Like state and school district officials around the country, the Texas Education Agency reported a marked decrease in public school enrollment statewide during the 2020-2021 school year.
Curiously, while some districts, such as Fort Worth, are reporting historic enrollment decreases, others, such as Liberty Hill, northwest of Austin, saw sharp increases as families moved to more popular areas within the state.
At the same time, the Texas Homeschool Coalition reports that the number of homeschooling families increased by almost 300% in 2021. That means Texans are watching a shift in how and where families choose to live and raise their families.
Providing more education options to families couldn’t come a moment too soon. Just one-quarter of Texas eighth graders are proficient in reading, significantly lower than the national average.
Among black and Hispanic students, the percentages who can read proficiently drops to 11% and 19%, respectively.
Currently, fewer Texas students can read proficiently than could do so in the late 1990s. Mathematics outcomes don’t fare any better.
Where district schooling has failed, education choice holds promise.
Education choice improves academic achievement and attainment, increases access to safe schools, has positive fiscal effects, improves civic outcomes, and, critically, enables families to select learning environments that align with their values.
It should come as no surprise, then, that school choice also increases parental satisfaction.
The small but disproportionately vocal minority that still opposes education freedom in Texas is largely confined to the halls of the Texas Education Association, the state teachers union.
Unions are out of step with Texas families, 74% of whom support education savings accounts. With an account, the state deposits a portion of a child’s funds from the state K-12 formula in a private account that parents use to buy education products and services.
These accounts allow families to customize their child’s education by selecting textbooks and personal tutors, paying for private school tuition if they choose, and even saving money from year to year, to name just a few options.
In fact, research from North Carolina found that more than 60% of participating families are using an account to access more than one learning option at the same time.
For some parents and students, they may want a private school that aligns with their personal beliefs. Others may need an education therapist and individualized technology to help a child with special needs.
Families across Arizona and Florida, along with children in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi, are using the accounts, and lawmakers in West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Indiana have approved proposals in recent years to create similar account options.
Some have argued that school choice would be difficult for families living in rural areas of Texas. Yet, those concerns are overblown. Nearly 70% of Americans living in rural areas have a private school within 10 miles of their home, and 34% of those families have a private school within 5 miles of their home.
Furthermore, supply is sure to meet demand once families can control their share of education funding. New schools will spring up and existing private schools may add additional campuses.
Other claims that parents will misspend money have also been debunked by research. In Arizona, an auditor general’s report found that misspending amounted to just 1% of account funds—and some of this misspending was attributed to the state Department of Education’s poor guidance for families on allowable expenses.
Officials in other states, such as North Carolina, have adopted new tools to help prevent inappropriate spending before it takes place.
Texas is a popular destination for families looking to move, and state education trends are shifting. State officials should follow the governor’s lead and make Texas a popular destination not just for families looking for a new home, but also for more quality learning options.
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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)
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