Thursday, November 17, 2022



The systemic racism of the teachers' unions

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could reverse the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, in which SCOTUS asserted that the use of an applicant’s race as a factor in an admissions policy of a public educational institution does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The current case specifically cites the use of race in the admissions process at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, maintain that Harvard violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, “which bars entities that receive federal funding from discriminating based on race, because Asian American applicants are less likely to be admitted than similarly qualified white, Black, or Hispanic applicants.”

One of the glaring outrages of the case is that the two national teachers unions – the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers – filed amicus briefs in which they pound the racial bean counting drum. The unions insist that “diversity” must remain a factor in choosing who gets to be admitted into a given college.

The NEA brief claims that “elementary and secondary schools remain heavily segregated. In the 2019–2020 school year, the average White student attended a majority White school. By contrast, students of color are far more likely to attend schools where the majority of students are also students of color.”

The irony of the teachers unions’ deploring racism in education is glaring, because it is the very same unions that essentially imprison children – notably poor children of color – in substandard public schools. Specifically, the union-mandated collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), in place throughout most of the country, bring to light why government-run schools fail so many kids.

Collective bargaining, a term first introduced into the lexicon by socialist Beatrice Webb in 1891, is a process of negotiations between employers and employees aimed at reaching agreements that set wage scales, work rules, etc.

In reality, CBAs dictate that teachers unions don’t treat teachers as professionals, but rather as interchangeable widgets, all of whom are of equal value and competence. To differentiate between effective and ineffective educators as a result of what their students actually learn would necessitate doing away with their industrial-style work rules. Those include one-size-fits-all salary scales, tenure (contractually known as “permanence”) and seniority or “last in, first out (LIFO), whereby if a teacher must be laid off due to budgetary belt-tightening, it is not the least talented teacher who is on the chopping block, but rather the newest hire.

Regarding salaries, teacher quality doesn’t matter a whit to teacher union honchos, only the number of years he or she has on the job. The other way teachers can increase their salary is by taking “professional development classes” which typically have no impact on student learning.

Permanence clauses make it just about impossible to fire an incompetent teacher. In California, it was revealed during a court case in 2012 that on average just 2.2 of California’s 300,000 teachers (0.0008%) are dismissed yearly for unprofessional conduct or unsatisfactory performance.

The arbitrariness of seniority based decisions is epitomized by Bhavini Bhakta, a teacher-of-the-year who lost teaching positions in four southern California schools over eight years because she lacked seniority. One of her ongoing encounters with LIFO involved a situation where either she or another teacher-of-the-year – who was hired on the same day – was to be laid off. The district had the teachers pull numbered popsicle sticks out of a hat to see which one kept her job. Ms. Bhakta got a lower number and thus lost her position, yet again. Also, The New Teacher Project found that only 13% to 16% of the teachers laid off in a seniority-based system would also be cut under a system based on teacher effectiveness.

Many studies have borne out the harm of CBAs to America’s children. In 2013, an analysis by the University of Chicago showed that strong unions have a greater impact on student proficiency rates in math and reading than weak unions. The researchers found that a $233 rise in union dues per teacher causes student math and reading scores to drop almost 4 percentage points. Also, a $14 increase in union spending per student results in a 3 percentage point decrease in math and reading scores. The reason for the correlation between spending and test scores is that powerful teachers unions are able to get laws passed that protect their interests, and make it more difficult to implement child-friendly reforms that boost student achievement.

Released in 2019, “The Long-run Effects of Teacher Collective Bargaining,” a study by researchers Michael Lovenheim and Alexander Willen, found that, among men, exposure to a collective bargaining law in the first 10 years after passage depresses students’ future annual earnings by $2,134 (3.93%). The negative effect of CBAs is particularly pronounced among Black and Hispanic males. In these two subgroups, annual earnings decline by $3,246 (9.43 percent), and at the same time, employment and labor force participation are reduced.

Another way the unions have done great damage to children, especially minorities, was their insistence on shutting down schools during the Covid pandemic. Using testing data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states and D.C., researchers found that “shifts to remote or hybrid instruction during 2020-21 had profound consequences on student achievement. In districts that went remote, achievement growth was lower for all subgroups, but especially for students attending high-poverty schools. In areas that remained in-person, “there were still modest losses in achievement, but there was no widening of gaps between high and low-poverty schools in math (and less widening in reading).”

Additionally, a study by Amplify, a curriculum and assessment provider, examined test data for some 400,000 elementary school students across 37 states. It found that the shutdowns led to a spike in students unable to read at grade level, with literacy losses “disproportionately concentrated in the early elementary grades. The study revealed that during the 2021-2022 school year, 47% of black and 39% of Hispanic second graders fell behind on literacy and needed “intensive intervention,” compared to 26% of their white peers.

Of course, if any students try to break out of their public school prisons, the teachers unions are standing at the schoolhouse door fighting tooth-and nail against any kind of parental choice.

Clearly, the NEA, an organization that frequently rails about “systemic racism,” is guilty of that sin. Yiddish maven Leo Rosten wrote that the word “chutzpah” can best be exemplified by a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. The union’s chutzpah on beating the systemic racism drum, while acting in a way that ruins the lives of many minority kids, is another suitable example.

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Gettysburg College postpones event for people tired of ‘White cis men’

Gettysburg College has postponed a painting and writing event hosted by its Gender Sexuality and Resource Center for people who are “Tired of White cis men.”

The private Pennsylvania college offered the event as part of a peace and justice, or “P&J,” senior project but has since postponed it after it was shared online.

The event, originally scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 12, told people to “come paint and write about” how they are tired of straight, White men.

The pieces from the event would then be displayed in the school’s dining hall for the campus to view.

One anonymous Gettysburg alumnus told Fox News Digital that he was “pretty upset” by the event and that “as a White, cis male, the fact that basically people are being allowed to discriminate based on sexuality and race is not something that was ever in the Gettysburg that was taught to me.”

“Even as a conservative, the one thing Gettysburg used to always strive for was diversity, equity and inclusion but in an actual good way that you could have conservatives, you could have liberals, you could have actual conversations,” he said. “You could have that academic back and forth as a liberal arts college.”

The alumnus told Fox News Digital that he believes the event was postponed because “they thought they were going to get away with it” until “it got shared on to an Instagram thing with 2 million people.”

“And a bunch of people saw it, and they went, ‘What the heck?’” he said, adding that he believes the event sends a “negative” message to Gettysburg alumni and potential donors.

“I hope that they take this as a learning experience and push back on some of this wokeness that you’ve seen, because the primary focus of school should be to educate the next generation and make sure that we have a society that continues to function and think critically,” he said.

A current senior at Gettysburg College who spoke on anonymity over fear of punishment told Fox News Digital that they were “not surprised at all that a poster like this is spread through the college, considering there was a public drag show in the middle of campus three or four weeks prior to this.”

“Normally, rhetoric on posters of this nature tends to be more inclusive and welcoming to the target student groups. But this rhetoric is simply divisive,” the student said. “The faculty on campus always preaches unity among students on campus but never actually do anything to enact this unity.”

“The school should not allow this type of rhetoric as it openly and boldly defies what the college says they want to achieve from their student body,” the senior continued.

The student said this “incident, like many other incidences that have occurred at Gettysburg College, makes me feel as if the school is incompetent” and that the “school no longer allows students to speak freely, they only allow ideas and concerns of students to be heard that fit their ideas that the school would like to promote.”

“The school does not have an accurate grasp of how students truly feel about the college,” the student said. “Most are angered and discouraged that the school is improving not just from this event but many other events that have occurred before this.”

This is not the first incident of its kind to occur at a college campus in America. In 2019, Yale student Isis Davis-Marks wrote an op-ed that pledged to monitor and collect dirt on White men on campus in order to undermine them in potential future confirmation hearings later in life.

“I’m watching you, white boy,” the student wrote.

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Red State Coalition Halts Biden’s Cancellation of Student Loan Debt

Efforts to challenge presidential priorities in court are akin to military campaigns with opening salvos, intermittent skirmishes, daring attacks, and bold defenses. In many respects, the legal battles over President Joe Biden’s executive action canceling federal student loan debts fit this pattern.

The latest news from the front is a victory, albeit a preliminary one, for the challengers. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals entered an order Monday temporarily preventing the Biden administration from canceling any student debt.

The 8th Circuit currently is considering a lower court’s ruling that a coalition of six states led by Missouri lack standing to challenge student loan cancellation.

Under long-established legal rules, nobody can bring a lawsuit unless he first can show that he has standing (i.e., a concrete injury caused by debt cancellation and fixable by the courts).

Missouri argues that it has standing because it has a state agency, the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri, that services student loans and stands to lose millions of dollars if the Biden administration cancels those loans.

The state also argues that it has standing because money that the Higher Education Loan Authority earns is invested in the state’s public colleges, and thus a reduction in its income will reduce the schools’ funding.

The 8th Circuit appears to agree that Missouri has standing. Based on the court’s order, the state’s interrelation with the Higher Education Loan Authority—whether statutory, financial, or both—is likely sufficient for Missouri to sue over the Biden administration’s plans for student loans.

The appeals court didn’t squarely address whether Biden has the authority he claims to cancel the debts of millions of student borrowers. But it acknowledged that “[w]hatever the eventual outcome of this case, it will affect the finances of millions of Americans with student loan debt as well as those Americans who pay taxes to finance the government and indeed everyone who is affected by such far-reaching fiscal decisions.”

This prompted the court to pause the impending debt cancellation and preserve the status quo while the plan’s ultimate legality is assessed. Although the case before the 8th Circuit involves only six states, the court’s order prevents the administration from forgiving loans nationwide.

So, where does this ruling fit in the broader fight over student debt cancellation? Before this decision, standing had been favorable ground for the Biden administration to defend. In a matter of weeks, it convinced the Supreme Court to turn aside two would-be challengers to the plan, both of whom lacked the concrete, particular injury needed to establish standing.

The states’ win on standing is procedural—it doesn’t resolve the legality of Biden’s plan, and the general pause on loan forgiveness will remain in place only until the 8th Circuit rules on the case before it.

Still, the win has significant implications beyond the temporary pause. Now that at least one state, Missouri, appears to have standing, the courts must answer the fundamental question: Does Biden have the power to cancel $400 billion in student debt without specific congressional authorization?

In fact, one lower court already has reached this question and answered it in the negative. A federal judge in Texas ruled Thursday that the HEROES Act, the 2003 statute on which Biden bases his action, doesn’t provide any authority to cancel student debt. The court, therefore, found the administration’s debt cancellation plan unlawful and vacated in its entirely.

If Biden’s actions have already been vacated by the federal court in Texas, what does the 8th Circuit’s decision add? In a word, security. The Texas decision charged headlong into the merits of the dispute, largely bypassing important skirmish lines like the standing question.

This left the ruling vulnerable on its flank, and the Biden administration, which immediately appealed the decision, is poised to turn that flank and have the decision overruled.

Missouri, by contrast, occupies stronger ground and is better positioned than any other current litigant to sustain its attack.

When standing is disposed of, the Biden administration will have less room for maneuver. Missouri and its compatriot states can then concentrate their fire where the administration’s defenses are weakest: the argument that a 20-year-old statute with no mention of debt cancellation authorizes Biden to erase the debt of 40 million borrowers.

A pitched battle on student loans looms. If Missouri prevails before the 8th Circuit, the campaign will likely shift eastward and be fought to a conclusion before the Supreme Court, with congressional antagonists looking idly on from across Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, some 26 million borrowers have already applied for debt cancellation. With Congress locked in its habitual torpor, both borrowers and taxpayers must await the outcome of another round of “lawfare” in the federal courts.

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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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