I remember how it was -- JR
Thursday, February 02, 2023
NYC: Don’t let parents voices, cries for charter schools fall on deaf Democratic ears
Overwhelmingly, city Democratic parents support charter schools and want the state to lift the cap that prevents entirely new ones from opening, reports The Post’s Carl Campanile — yet most of the city’s Democratic representatives in Albany won’t budge.
At least 12 highly promising charters, already cleared by the SUNY Charter School Committee, are just waiting for the Legislature to act before moving ahead. All the city’s existing charters have waiting lists running collectively to the tens of thousands.
But the teachers unions despise charters because they’re mostly not unionized, and their superior performance embarrasses the United Federation of Teachers-run competition. (Of course, “superior performance” is why parents want them.)
But the UFT and its statewide parent, New York State United Teachers, rule Albany: Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), once supportive of charters, couldn’t even become speaker until he’d won the unions’ backing — and it’s obvious what he had to promise to get it.
Heck, No. 2 state Senate leader Mike Gianaris (D-Queens) has sung the praises of one charter waiting to open in his district, Urban Dove Team Charter School III, but also refuses to even ease the cap because NYSUT and the UFT won’t have it.
The poll commission by Democrats for Education Reform proves it’s not the public standing in the way: Two-thirds of city parents support lifting the cap; sentiment among Democrats is 2:1, as it is among Hispanic and black New Yorkers.
All that stands between city families and vastly greater educational opportunity is squalid backroom dealing with a single special interest — one that always claims to care about the kids.
Parents of New York, wake up: Your elected leaders are selling out your kids’ future. It’s time to revolt.
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GOP Charges Ahead on Education
Proving once again that he is in touch with ordinary Americans, Donald Trump selected education for the first video message of his 2024 presidential campaign. On Saturday, Trump emphasized education in addresses in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.
School performance fell sharply during the pandemic, as liberal governors shuttered schools for prolonged periods and required masks at the expense of learning. Children became pawns in the tyrannical measures taken under the guise of responding to Covid.
The last full year before Covid was 2019, and it was the last year of 50 million students enrolled in public schools. That total has since fallen, and experts predict a long-term decline in public school enrollment for decades into the future.
Massachusetts, long ranked at the top nationwide in student achievement, has dropped to a 19-year low in its performance as the Democrat-controlled state pushes Leftist ideology in schools. The biggest declines in performance were by minorities and low-income students, and children who did not learn English at home.
Throughout the rest of our country, the decline in student achievement and increase in illiteracy is shocking. In Pennsylvania, the 3rd graders reading with the expected level of proficiency dropped from 60% to 50% over the last three years.
There was a red wave in Ohio in the last election, after Trump held many rallies there. Republicans increased their supermajority in its Senate, attained a supermajority in its House, and won both the governorship and the vacant U.S. Senate seat.
Now it’s time to cash in on that political capital by targeting the Ohio education system, which ranks in the bottom half nationally in learning basic reading and arithmetic skills. The very first bill introduced in the Ohio Senate is to take power away from an independent state board, which has failed to get the job done.
This bill would allow the Republican governor to appoint a new education director to establish curriculum and strong standards for academic achievement. Rather than diffusing responsibility, this legislation would establish one person to be publicly accountable for the failure to teach youngsters how to read and add.
Trump boldly calls for empowering parents to directly elect school principals, to hold them accountable for their failure to teach basic skills. A bestselling book in 1955 was Why Johnny Can’t Read, and the simple answer was because schools are not using the superior method of teaching kids how to read, which is phonics.
Nearly 70 years later, schools are still not using phonics, and as a result perhaps 45 million Americans cannot even fill out a ballot in order to vote as they intend. So instead some of those ballots are being filled out for them by political hacks, who are just fine with more illiteracy.
Young adults have long been bashful about never learning how to read, rather than question why some of their friends can read but they cannot. But as traditional inhibitions disappear on social media, young people are themselves beginning to ask publicly why they were not taught to read.
Those harmed by inadequate schools are a voting bloc that Republicans can and must reach in order to win future elections. Georgia and Arizona are two swing states that Republicans must win in 2024 to capture the White House, and both rank among the ten states having the most illiteracy.
When people cannot read, then they cannot access and process independent political information needed to fill out ballots in an informed way. The higher the illiteracy, the more ballots that are filled out as part of ballot harvesting and massive drop-box dumps, and the more difficult it is to win on principle.
Meanwhile, even a liberal Republican governor has apparently gotten the message that the public is fed up with liberal ideology in school, rather than instruction on basic skills. Last year Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox vetoed a bill that would have prohibited male-bodied athletes from competing in girls’ sports, as did the liberal Republican governor in Indiana.
In both states the Republican legislatures promptly overrode those vetoes that pandered to the Left. Likewise, the Republican Arkansas legislature overrode the veto by its anti-Trump Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson of a bill prohibiting transgender medical interventions on children.
Last week the Republican legislature in Utah passed a bill to prohibit transgender medical interventions on children, and its left-leaning Republican Governor Cox was smart enough to sign it into law the next day after it reached his desk. Lessons learned, with more political ground to gain ahead.
As illiteracy climbs in the United States, this new focus by Republicans on learning is a political necessity. Many traditionally Democrat voters have children in underperforming schools, and they are not learning to read as they should be.
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Lessons in Preferred Pronouns Should Start in Pre-K, Largest Teachers Union Says
The nation’s largest teachers union recommends that educators begin teaching the concepts of preferred personal pronouns and gender identity starting in pre-kindergarten.
“When you look at elementary school students, many people think they are too young to talk about pronouns,” said panelist Matthew Powell, a member of the National Education Association’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee, during a webinar last summer.
“However, by asking students their [preferred] pronouns at a young age,” Powell added, so-called education support professionals “can make room for students who may be exploring gender identity and show everyone [that] gender identity should not just be assumed.”
The Daily Signal reviewed the contents of the NEA-hosted panel discussion, held remotely June 23. The title of the webinar was “Using Pronouns to Create a Safe, Welcoming, and Inclusive Environment.”
According to audio and video available online, panelists exchanged pointers on how to teach students from preschool through college about using preferred personal pronouns.
Saul Ramos, a high school teaching assistant on the panel, said during the teachers union’s event that schools should be a place of support for students whose parents don’t accept their gender identity.
“Our educators have a real, big interest in using the correct names and pronouns for students, because we all know once you do start using someone’s correct pronouns, statistically it has shown that the suicide rates dramatically drop,” Ramos said.
‘Completely Baseless’
No evidence of a connection between failure to use preferred personal pronouns and youth suicide exists, Jay Greene, senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, told The Daily Signal. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
“The completely baseless suggestion that kids will kill themselves if teachers don’t use certain pronouns is essentially a form of extortion,” said Greene, author of a recent report on youth suicide and transgender medical treatments.
“It is no more credible and should no more be catered to than when people threaten that they’ll kill themselves if they don’t get the latest iPhone,” he said.
NEA, whose website claims it is the largest labor union in the U.S., has a history of pushing radical gender ideology on teachers and students.
The teachers union’s July conference in Chicago called for preferential treatment for those with “nonconforming genders.” In October, the union released a list of possible preferred personal pronouns, including “they,” “ze,” “zem,” and “zir.”
NEA also issued a guide to LGBT rights for teachers that describes “mispronouning” as “a form of harassment.”
‘Welcoming and Safe Place’
The five panelists emphasized the importance of distinguishing biology from gender in the classroom.
“Being thoughtful about how we use our pronouns is a meaningful way we can support students whose gender might be different than what’s on their birth certificate,” Powell told webinar attendees.
Powell recommended asking students of all ages their preferred names and personal pronouns and what they would like to be called to create an inclusive environment for LGBT students.
“Even if students are not accepted at home, oftentimes schools are their only place of hope for a welcoming and safe place,” Powell said.
Heritage’s Greene said teachers should recognize the rights of parents in the education of their own children.
“When teachers decide that they are going to expose children to [preferred personal] pronouns and gender identity regardless of parental preferences, as the NEA recommends, they are breaking faith with parents and undermining the integrity of families,” Greene told The Daily Signal.
The National Education Association didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on this report.
‘Pronouns Are About Respect’
During the webinar, panelist Bobby Travers recommended introducing books that cover preferred personal pronouns and gender identity into libraries starting in pre-K.
Travers suggested using lists of recommended books from Welcoming Schools, an inclusion program offered by the Human Rights Campaign, the powerful LGBT political advocacy group .
These include books marketed for kindergartners regarding transgenderism, such as “I Am Jazz: Understanding Transgender Children,” and gender expression, such as “Love Makes a Family” and “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo.” The latter book, the story of a male bunny who likes another male bunny, is a parody of a children’s book by Charlotte Pence, daughter of former Vice President Mike Pence.
The NEA panel also addressed challenges in teaching elementary schoolers about preferred personal pronouns. The panelists suggested working preferred pronouns into English class and encouraged to teachers to include them when introducing themselves to their students.
“At the elementary level, pronouns are about respect,” Powell said. “The greatest thing you can do to show respect is to correctly identify them by their proper names and their proper pronouns they like to be used.”
Powell promoted “I’m Here” badges from the NEA-LGBTQ+ Caucus, which include a “Quick Response,” or QR, code that students may scan to access resources describing abortion as the removal of “pregnancy tissue,” encouraging gender transitions without parental consent, and promoting “sex work.”
NEA members founded the LGBTQ+ Caucus in the 1980s to “provide educators, education support professionals, and students, with safe schools free of anti-LGBTQ+ bias and intolerance, and to provide sound education programs for all students,” according to the union’s website.
“Using [preferred personal] pronouns allows students to be part of the school community,” panel moderator and biology teacher Bill Farmer said. “If they’re not being supported, there’s no way that child can succeed in school.”
‘Misgendering’ Equals Disrespect
The panel talked about how to address students and colleagues who don’t take the pronouns issue seriously. Ramos emphasized that preferred pronouns are nothing to joke about.
“I don’t deal good when someone uses it as a joke because, to me, nothing about it is a joking matter,” he said.
The panel discussed ways to refer to students without using the “gender binary,” including “Hey, folks” or “Listen, everyone,” instead of “Hey, guys.”
As a biology teacher, Farmer said, he teaches the equivalent of “Gender Identity 101” in conglomeration with anatomy lessons. He warned against conflating “biological sex and gender identity.”
“Gender identity is how you see yourself within the greater context of society, separate from the biological component of your physical anatomy,” Farmer said.
Anthony Brisson, senior analyst in NEA’s Human and Civil Rights Department, concluded the panel by encouraging attendees to use everyone’s preferred personal pronouns as a sign of respect and inclusivity. “Misgendering” reflects disrespect, he said.
“Social interactions where a person is addressed by their correct name and pronouns consistent with their gender identity are widely recognized as a basic, yet critical, aspect of gender affirmation,” Brisson said. “Addressing someone by the wrong name or misgendering through the use of incorrect pronouns can feel disrespectful, unsafe, and harmful to the person being misgendered.”
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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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