Democrats Forcing Teachers to Lie

There's a national conversation occurring right now about the role of parents in the lives of their children—specifically, the role a parent has in critical decisions regarding their child's sexuality and gender identity.

In Virginia, a bill is being debated right now that would compel teachers and administrators to disclose to parents if their child is identifying as a different gender from their birth while at school. Critics call this a forced outing. I discussed it in this space last week in detail.

This is an issue that should be completely non-partisan and not even worthy of debate. So, of course, because woke Democrat lawmakers are involved, it has become highly partisan and a heated debate.

When most observers contemplate this issue and engage in the emotional discussion that inevitably ensues, one's perspective will naturally gravitate toward either the parent who would like to know what's going on with their child when they're at school or that of the child who might wish to keep certain secrets from their parents.

Lost in this discussion is the role of the teacher.

The most outspoken representatives of the education class will advocate for secrecy to prevail. They believe they are the only adults who can be trusted with such things and that the parent inevitably is a judgmental abuser who will force their child to suicide rather than compassionately deal with their gender identity issues.

But suppose you think this policy through, a habit not often associated with left-wing advocates. In that case, you'll realize the position of the Democrats and the professional educators who are on the side of secrecy or really on the side of deception.

In short, their position is for teachers to be compelled to lie to keep their jobs.

Read that sentence again.

The position of the Democratic Party on this vital issue involving adolescent and pre-adolescent children is to force teachers to lie to parents in order to keep their jobs.

In California, a teacher just lost her job because she refused to lie to a parent about this very issue:

A California teacher, who lost her job after refusing to comply with a California district's gender policies, citing Christian beliefs, is blowing the whistle on the expectations she felt as a teacher to not only hide students' gender transitions from parents, but also to keep them in the dark through lying.

"I knew immediately, like in my gut, in my heart, in my soul, that there was a decision I had to make because, you know, these two things were totally butting heads," Jessica Tapia, who worked at the Jurupa Unified School District, told Fox News Digital. "I essentially had to pick one. Am I going to obey the district in the directive that are not lining up with… my own beliefs, convictions and faith? Or am I going to stay true…, choose my faith, choose to be obedient to… the way the Lord has called me to live. And so it was crazy to be in the position where I realized that I couldn't be a Christian and a teacher."

For anyone advocating for the teacher, school counselor, or school administrator to keep sexual and gender identity secrets with a child secret from their parents, they need to recognize exactly the scenario they are creating.

Say a parent recognizes that their child is going through something in their life. They're not sure what it is, but they know that they're not the same. They're behaving strangely around the house. They're concerned. So they call their child's teacher.

"I've noticed that Jane is not herself lately. She is secretive, she dresses differently, and she's very moody. Please, tell me, have you noticed anything at school? Is there anything going on that I should know about?"

Now, what is the teacher supposed to do at this moment? According to the Democrats and the policy that they're promoting, they want the teacher to tell this parent, this concerned parent, this parent who is doing all the right things and trying to find out what's going on with their child, the Democrats want this teacher to lie. They want this teacher to tell the parent that everything's fine and there's nothing going on that they should know about.

And if the teacher doesn't feel comfortable lying to a parent about something so serious, they are fired.

Now, if you listen to the left, this entire issue comes down to forced outing and eventual suicide for the adolescent child who chooses to out themselves to their school but stays in the closet to their parents. And I suppose from a 12-year-old's perspective, that's all that matters.

But what if you're a teacher? What if you actually care about the child's future? What if you think, in your judgment, that the parent should know about this?

Too bad. You will lie, and you will deceive, or you will be out of a job.

Now, we're used to electing officials lying, and we're used to government workers lying, and we're certainly used to Democrats lying, but this may be the first time in American history that the party is advocating that their lies be instituted as policy for government workers going forward.

There's a lot at stake in this issue, and it all comes down to one very important value: the truth.

What side are you on?

https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2023/02/16/democrats-forcing-teachers-to-lie-n2619644

**************************************************

The UFT’s racist effort to crush charter schools

When it comes to minority city families’ efforts to get their children a quality public-school education, Michael Mulgrew, his United Federation of Teachers and their politician pawns are literally standing in the schoolhouse door (albeit less blatantly than Alabama Gov. George Wallace back in 1963).

We’re talking, of course, about the UFT’s relentless drive to prevent more public charter schools from opening in the city, even though charters plainly do better by their students.

In the last pre-COVID year, 62.2% of city charter kids scored proficient on statewide math tests, vs. just 45.6% at regular public schools. In reading, it was 57.3% vs. 47.4%.

The gap for black students: 63.9% vs. 28.3% in math, 58.2% vs. 35% in reading.

On a different front, charter enrollment of English Language Learners has been rising rapidly, perhaps because these public schools manage to teach ELL students to be proficient in English at twice the rate of regular city schools.

In neighborhoods across the city, the only high-quality public schools are charters.

Insofar as they can, parents are voting with their feet: 29% of city black students now attend a charter, with another 8% at private or Catholic schools. Many more are on waitlists, hoping charter seats open up.

Put it another way: Almost half of all NYC charter students are black, with most of the rest being Latino — and interest is growing among Asian-Americans, too, after the de Blasio years saw excellence downgraded at many once-high-performing regular public schools.

Membership in the United Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, is predominantly (about 60%) white. The statewide parent union, New York State United Teachers, is 80% white.

That is: As good a job as the unions do of hiding it, their war on charters is a case of well-organized, privileged whites striving to preserve that privilege by denying opportunity to lower-income non-whites.

We don’t believe that Mulgrew’s motive is racist, but the facts fit what the left these days routinely calls “racism,” and maybe even “white supremacy culture.”

To cover the reality, the UFT uses its resources to buy minority politicians and create fake grassroots (“astroturf”) support for its agenda. But polls show most New Yorkers want more charters, with 2:1 support for expansion among both African-Americans and Hispanics.

As far as “equity” goes: The city’s 275 charter schools enroll 142,500 students (again, overwhelmingly low-income, minority kids), about 15% of total public-school enrollment. But thanks to years of UFT and NYSUT backroom maneuvering, charters get just 10% of city education spending — roughly $3 billion out of the Department of Education’s $31 billion budget.

Yet charters still vastly outperform the UFT-dominated DOE schools.

It may not be racist if the UFT and NYSUT succeed in stopping Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to allow dozens more charters to open in the city, but it certainly will be rank injustice.

https://nypost.com/2023/02/18/the-ufts-racist-effort-to-crush-charter-schools/

**************************************************

School choice gives parents the power to break teachers unions' chokeholds on students

School choice advocate Corey DeAngelis said teachers unions aim to maintain power over people's kids by fighting against letting families have educational options.

The growing movement to give parents the ability to choose where to send their children to school has helped them break through teachers unions' chokeholds on education, a school choice advocate told Fox News.

"Finally, we are freeing families from the clutches of the teachers unions once and for all, and there's not a dang thing they can do about it," Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, told Fox News.

The school choice debate has taken a front seat as parents push back against curriculum decisions and as more states pass legislation offering more educational options for students. School choice, which allows tax dollars to follow a student rather than a specific school, would free families from the teachers unions' control and allow them to pick an education system that aligns with their values, DeAngelis said.

"The teachers union monopoly wants to force kids to attend their residentially assigned, government-run institutions that they staff," DeAngelis told Fox News. "It's about maintaining power. It's about maintaining a monopoly on the minds of other people's kids."

"For far too long in K-12 education, the only special interests who had any influence were the ones who represented the employees in the system," he continued. "But now the kids have a union of their own, and they're called parents."

Debates over what topics are appropriate for classroom discussions, such as critical race theory and gender identity, have become flashpoints nationwide. Parents have increasingly spoken out at school board meetings to voice concerns and advocate for a say in their kids' education.

"School choice is a winner for everybody except for Randi Weingarten and the teachers unions who want to trap your kids in schools that aren't working for them," DeAngelis said.

DeAngelis blames the teacher unions for trying to control the minds of our nation's kids by not supporting educational options for families.
DeAngelis blames the teacher unions for trying to control the minds of our nation's kids by not supporting educational options for families. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Weingarten, the president of American Federation of Teachers, previously said school choice advocates aimed to privatize and defund public education. She criticized efforts to divert funds from public districts to bankroll school choice initiatives.

"America’s parents don’t want vouchers that syphon money away from the schools that 90 percent of kids attend—they want to invest in public schools and get educators the resources they need to create safe classrooms, boost academic skills, and pave pathways to career, college and life," a spokesperson for the union told Fox News in a statement. She pointed to a study that found "parents and voters back improving education in public schools over more 'school choice'" by an 80-20 margin.

That argument is an "admission that they're not confident in the product that they're providing," DeAngelis told Fox News. "Why would giving families a choice defund public schools that you staff?"

Giving parents a choice wouldn't exclude public schools, but would allow for a wider array of options, according to DeAngelis.

"We don't want to destroy the public schools," he told Fox News. "We want to make them better."

"When you inject competition into that system, the district starts to allocate more resources into the classroom so they don't upset parents, and they have to compete for the employees," DeAngelis added.

Math scores saw their largest decreases ever in 2022, according to the Nation's Report Card. Reading scores also dropped to levels not seen since 1992 for fourth and eighth graders across the country.

School choice would also allow disadvantaged children more opportunities to access educational options like private schools that only some families can afford, DeAngelis said.

"Why should they be forced into this one-size-fits-all system?" DeAngelis said. "School choice is an equalizer."

Arizona became the first state to pass universal education scholarship accounts to all 1.1 million K-12 students in the state in 2022. Other states, including Iowa, Utah and Florida, have followed in pushing school choice legislation.

"It's the teachers unions' own fault for overplaying their hand and awakening a sleeping giant: parents who just want more of a say in their kids' education," DeAngelis said.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/school-choice-gives-parents-power-break-teachers-unions-chokeholds-students-corey-deangelis

***********************************

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

*******************************