Tuesday, February 21, 2023



GOP-Led States Race To Roll Out New School Choice Measures

Which state will be the next to enact universal school choice?

In January, Utah and Iowa passed legislation that would create universal school choice, joining Arizona and West Virginia as trailblazers in universal ESA programs.

These universal school choice programs take the form of education savings accounts, or ESAs, which disburse funds to families in flexible accounts that can be spent on a variety of education related expenses — tuition, tutoring, textbooks, and more. Unlike scholarships or vouchers, funds from accounts can roll over from year to year, incentivizing economization.

“Too often, parents have been frustrated that their child’s assigned school has failed to meet their needs,” an education scholar at the Heritage Foundation, Jason Bedrick, tells the Sun. “What’s clear is that parents are tired of the one-size-fits-some model of education.”

“ESAs give families the freedom and flexibility to choose the learning environment that’s the right fit for their children,” Mr. Bedrick says.

Opponents, often buoyed by teachers’ and superintendents’ unions, say these programs divert resources from traditional public schools. The programs have also come under recent scrutiny for unusual educational expenditures, including chicken coops and SeaWorld tickets.

Proponents say, however, that public funding should follow the student — if a child is no longer enrolled in a public school, he or she should be able to spend the taxpayer dollars in the education program of the family’s choice, including raising chickens and visiting aquariums.

Of the proposals, the loudest declaration in support of school choice comes out of Arkansas, where Governor Sanders made a splashy announcement of her education plan after her rebuttal to the State of the Union address last week.

Ms. Sanders’s plan would phase in a universal ESA program over the course of three years, alongside increased benefits, including raises, for public school teachers.

In Wyoming and South Carolina, bills to create ESAs have passed in at least one of each state’s legislative chambers. South Carolina’s legislation would create a more limited program — only 15,000 accounts would be available to lower- and middle-income families.

Meanwhile, Wyoming’s would be a universal school choice regime with funding of about $6,000 per student.

In neighboring Idaho, a similar bill in the state senate that would create a universal ESA program, with funding of just less than $6,000 per student, made it out of the education committee after a grueling hearing.

The Republican chairman of the committee, Dave Lent, opposed the measure. “I cannot, in good faith, send money out with no accountability,” Mr. Lent said, according to the Idaho Capital Sun.

In Texas and Oklahoma, Republican governors are making concerted pushes for school choice programs despite hesitancy from their own party leadership.

Oklahoma’s legislature is currently considering two bills that would create large-scale ESA programs — one universal. While Governor Stitt has voiced ardent support for school choice measures, he’s faced opposition from within his own party. Oklahoma’s Republican speaker of the house, Charles McCall, has historically opposed education savings accounts.

At a recent event, Mr. McCall was quoted by the Journal Record as advocating for education reforms to support students “in all four corners of the state” — implying that ESA programs do not achieve that end.

In Texas, the speaker of the house, Dade Phelan, has expressed skepticism about school choice measures in the past, while Governor Abbott has made a concerted push for ESAs. A bill in the state senate would create a universal program.

“That will give all parents the ability to choose the best education option for their child,” Mr. Abbott said in January at a pro-school choice event. “The bottom line is this: This is really about freedom.”

Mr. Phelan, however, appears to be coming around after appointing a new pro-ESA chairman to the Public Education Committee.

Texas and Oklahoma face challenges from their more rural areas, which have historically opposed school choice. Recent polling, though, has shown that rural voters tend to support school choice, but superintendents’ unions wield significant power over elected officials.

In Governor DeSantis’s Florida, the first house bill of the legislative session would universalize the state’s current ESA program.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, Governor Hobbs is crusading to roll back that state’s trailblazing school choice program. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Ms. Hobbs rejected the premise that governors across the country are promoting.

“What I want is for every student in the state of Arizona no matter where they live to have access to high quality public education,” Ms. Hobbs said. “With this universal voucher system, that’s not happening.”

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Group advocating for 'race-blind America' demands woke UNC medical school stop injecting social justice issues into its curriculum

A group advocating for 'race blind America' has launched a campaign to stop the University of North Carolina's medical school integrating social justice issues into its curriculum.

Color Us United is a non-profit that claims to fight for people who 'are upset by government, corporate and media claims that America is a hateful country'.

Its most recent initiative is a bid to stop the UNC School of Medicine from implementing social justice into its teaching - which the school is attempting to do via a task force that gave recommendations in 2020 that is taking advisement from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The taskforce claims: 'A wealth of literature has demonstrated disparities in health care access, quality, and outcomes. We now know these disparities are apparent both across our healthcare system and within most individual providers’ patient panels.'

The AAMC protocols also require medical students to study issues such as 'Unconscious Bias Awareness,' 'Understanding and Responding to Microaggressions' and 'Understanding that America's medical system is structurally racist.'

The taskforce's stated goals include finding environments where diverse groups of students thrive, training in areas of social justice and DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion), recruiting students from diverse backgrounds, eliminating racist content and terminology from the curriculum, avoiding implicit bias in treatment and allowing students to advocate on behalf of patients.

The UNC confirmed which of the recommendations they would be implementing in a 2022 report.

Ultimately, it wants all faculty to be trained in these methods and be judged based on their ability to integrate it into their teachings.

But Christian Watson, a spokesperson for Color Us United, told DailyMail.com this is little more than an attempt to force doctors to become social activists and send the medical field toward politicization.

'A big part of it is the accrediting agencies that have been taken over by people of some political ideas,' Watson said. 'The AAMC, the body that accredits all medical schools in America, has certain requirements it has to follow.'

He noted that the University of North Carolina - a part of the state's hallowed 'research triangle' - has taken at least 89 of these ideas from them.

They also argue that North Carolina is going to be teaching students that many health disparities are caused by racism.

'They want to subject professors to implicit bias training, actively discriminating against whites and Asians,' Watson added. 'Teach anti-racism ideology. They're teaching them how to be anti-racist as opposed to how to be good doctors.'

Color Us United - which aims to get 10,000 people to sign a petition against these initiatives - says this ideology is spreading, but that North Carolina is particularly important given its status as a state school

'North Carolina is the flagship institution, it's not only subject to AAMC but taxpayer dollars,' Watson noted. 'We think it's quite significant taxpayers know what kind of education their doctors get.'

While Watson believes there is some place for debate on racism and equity within the classrooms, he doesn't believe that the efforts of the AAMC are appropriate or done in good faith.

He said: 'I think the premise of the program, that we need to integrate social justice into medical education, is flawed. Doctors are not meant to be social activists. Doctors are meant to care for their patients.

'There's nothing wrong with having conversations, but they should be done on a neutral basis. Not one that affirms a particular viewpoint. They are basically positing a leftwing view point about health disparities to the exclusion of others that may challenge that,' he added.

The organization said in a press release that it wants 'UNC Medical School to renounce their commitment to social justice and affirm the importance of colorblind, meritocratic patient care over political activism'.

The group has fought DEI programs in the past, including when a small school district in California planned to spend $40 million teaching 'ethnic studies' to high school students

'Taxpayer dollars shouldn't be used to fund courses that are fundamentally racist and anti-American,' President Kenny Xu said.

There are plans to release a letter undersigned by doctors and legislators in an attempt to influence the issue further within the state, which is currently governed by Democrat Roy Cooper.

Currently, the organization's petition stands at just around 300 signatures, but they believe once their message is heard, it will spread.

'We believe that North Carolina can be a test case to challenge the broader demands of the AAMC,' Watson said. 'We think that overall, our message, which is not a political one, it's one of common sense, is gonna prevail.'

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'Woke' California university slammed for 'dehumanized' initiative encouraging students to tell on professors

College students are pushing back against a "woke" California university for encouraging students to tell on professors for racism if they aren't called on "consistently" during class.

Campus Reform correspondents Courtney McLain, Emily Sturge, and Darryl Boyer joined "Fox & Friends Weekend" to discuss the broader issues at hand with the far-left infusion of the "woke" agenda in college classrooms.

"I believe when Francis Bellamy wrote One Nation under God, Indivisible, we oftentimes overlook that word indivisible," Boyer told Rachel Campos-Duffy. "We must stop dividing our nation and come together as one… I spent a considerable amount of time in higher education. I spent my undergrad at the University of North Florida. Now I'm at Florida State University working on my graduate degree, and I've never felt like I've been discriminated against based on the color of my skin."

"And it just really makes me feel dehumanized when people can be able to tell on their professor for racism," he continued. "That really takes away the credibility for when things like that may really be happening."

California State University Monterey Bay has faced criticism for urging non-White students to report "race-related stress" under the Personal Growth and Counseling Center tab on its website.

"Document acts of racism or intolerance. Don't ignore or minimize your experiences, and think broadly about what could be an act of racism. It doesn't have to be an overt act (e.g., professor consistently not calling on you or minimizing your contributions, curriculum racially biased, etc). Talk to someone you trust, and report it," a webpage on "Coping with Racism and Discrimination" says.

According to the university website, race-related stress can cause psychological symptoms like anxiety, depression, paranoia, and self-blame, as well as physiological health concerns such as heart disease, hypertension, and muscle tension.

"Students of color who experience stereotype threat may begin to believe that their peers do not regard them as individuals, but as representatives of their racial/ethnic group," the page reads.

McLain, who is a student at University of Central Florida, noted her angst surrounding the move, citing concerns as to how it affects academic progress.

"I am seeing more and more of this diversity, equity and inclusion being forced by my school, and I'm frustrated because I feel like I'm not learning as much academically as I could because we're putting so much money into this," McLain said.

"We're seeing this in more and more schools across the country, that these students are just being believed automatically, which worries me because when I need to go to my administration about a problem, they don't want to believe me, since sometimes these students are actually saying things that are incredible," she continued.

Sturge is a student at the University of Florida, and she argued the left is "winning the culture war" through the avenue of "woke" education in America's classrooms.

"I think this story is just yet another example of wokeism taking over college campuses," Sturge said. "We're seeing the left inject this woke ideology into college classrooms because this is how the left is winning. They're winning the culture war because they're injecting it into our course curriculum."

"These things are absolutely crazy, and we're seeing these things happen in California, and so we feel like it's far away off in a blue state," she continued. "But here in Florida, we're also seeing that, too. We're Florida students, and we're seeing these woke ideals in our classrooms."

Despite the widespread effort of the far left, the trio touted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis,' R., efforts to counter indoctrination in the state's classrooms.

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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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