I remember how it was -- JR
School Choice Movement to Shape Presidential, Federal Races in 2024
In response to plunging test scores that have been made worse by the pandemic, states across the country have been implementing school choice reforms that are making public funding of schools portable.
In October 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, informally known as the “nation’s report card,” revealed that test scores nationwide have plunged to the lowest levels in the last 30 years in reading, while recording the biggest drop ever in math since the assessments began in 1990.
Some states are implementing reforms by creating education scholarship accounts, or ESAs. Such funding allows students to take public dollars out of failing school systems and use them for tuition and other education expenses via private schools, homeschooling, and tutoring.
ESAs are primarily targeted at lower-income students in households that cannot afford tutors or that need tuition assistance in order to afford private schools.
But universal ESAs that are available to students regardless of household income are becoming an increasingly popular option for some states.
As of March, there are 11 states with some type of ESA program, EducationWeek reported.
The school choice nonprofit EdChoice is calling 2023 “the year of universal school choice,” as 31 state legislatures are considering bills to either expand or start school choice programs, many of which include ESA options.
“Parents aren’t asking for school choice, they’re demanding it. Many states and schools will get left behind if they’re not receptive to the school choice movement, because it’s not stopping anytime soon,” Darrell Jones, president of the Stanley M. Herzog Charitable Foundation—which concentrates on Christian education—told The Epoch Times in a statement.
Lawmakers in states as diverse as West Virginia, Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, and Florida are listening to parents, said one expert.
“When you see a state like West Virginia adopt an education savings account that is available to nearly every child in the state, … lawmakers and families in Arizona say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we have the nation’s first education savings account program. There’s no reason that these options should not be available to the low-income children outside of Tucson,’” Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times.
The general result has been a land rush business in ESAs, he said, with Florida, Iowa, Utah, and Arkansas following West Virginia.
“I think what we can kind of take from this is that policymakers who believe that conservative solutions are the best answer to the assigned school system are looking to school choice as an indicator of their commitment to conservative answers,” added Butcher.
Impact on Upcoming Elections
Experts who spoke with The Epoch Times said that these reforms will have a large impact on federal races, including the 2024 presidential race, regardless of whether the candidates believe in conservative solutions.
“First of all, I’ll especially guarantee that this will be a major issue in the 2024 presidential race,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Epoch Times.
“Second, when they reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, you will see a big move towards really opening up the system everywhere,” he added.
Gingrich said that one of the driving forces behind the school choice movement is the renewed emphasis on parental rights in education, which he says he believes carries about an 84 percent approval rating.
One national pollster agrees with that general assessment, but would not cite specific numbers.
“The pandemic really opened up eyes for what happens in classrooms for parents all across the country. As a parent myself, it was concerning,” Trevor Smith, chief research officer for WPA Intelligence, told The Epoch Times. “The pandemic was the catalyst to the change.”
Smith said that candidates across the country are busy crafting their positions on school choice no matter what level of government that they seek to represent.
School Choice a Wedge Issue for Women
The issue has the potential to drive a wedge in an important voting block for Democrats, one expert said.
Today, women are evenly divided between the abortion issue and school choice, political commentator and former strategist Dick Morris told The Epoch Times.
“I think that while the abortion issue is the focus of single women, there is an increasing movement among married women with children to focus on school choice. And I think that that’s going to be fundamental,” Morris said.
Smith at WPA said that while he hasn’t polled the numbers, he generally agreed with that assessment. Morris also broke down the demographics.
“When I say unmarried women, it makes no difference if they are unmarried, widowed or divorced or separated. And if they’re married, it makes no difference if they’re married or just cohabitating,” Morris added.
Both Morris and Gingrich cited the threat that ESAs pose to one of the biggest players in federal education policy—teachers unions—as a key driver of the 2024 campaigns.
Allowing students to take federal dollars out of failing public school systems and move them to competitive schools could be a game changer, they both agreed, really weakening the power of teachers unions.
“I think we have to realize the seminal role, the founding role that teachers unions play in the leftist revolution going on [in] the country. The ‘woke’ culture starts with teachers in elementary school, with students nurtured by them until they go to left-wing colleges,” Morris said.
Freedom Versus Bureaucracy
Gingrich noted that public employee unions, such as teachers unions, have created a dangerous schism today that looks a lot like the country’s antebellum period, prior to the Civil War.
“What you’re seeing is almost a little bit scary in that it’s like the 1840s and 50s, where the free states and the slave states were drifting apart,” Gingrich said. “Today, you’re seeing the left wing bureaucratic cities and states are drifting in one direction, and everybody else is going in a different direction.”
Gingrich predicted that in the next few years, 50 to 60 percent of the country will have ESA school choice programs, while the entrenched bureaucratic teachers unions will control the rest.
He said the outcome would be both “really bad” and “really expensive” for schools in the deepest Democrat cities, still dominated by teachers unions.
“What you have is this very deep difference about the nature of America, with most—but not all—Democrats still trapped in a unionized bureaucratic model, where the government gets to coerce you,” said Gingrich, “and the Republicans and some Democrats increasingly moving towards a model of freedom, where you have real choices, and you have real power.”
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Woke school district in shambles over petty PC obsessions
Biology class must be really confusing in Easthampton, Mass.
That is, if the town’s search for their school superintendent is any indication.
The whole thing has turned into a farcical endeavor that seems more like a “South Park” episode than an earnest effort to fill a top administrative role.
To sum it up: a female school committee member thinks it’s offensive to call her and another colleague “ladies,” while a student wants anyone and everyone to be called a lady if they so choose.
It’s dizzying, even for 2023.
A few weeks ago, the town made national headlines after their first choice for the job — longtime educator Vito Perrone — lost the gig during email negotiations when he addressed women on the school committee as “ladies.”
Perrone said that the school committee chairperson, Cynthia Kwiecinski, told him that using the plural of lady was a “microaggression” and “the fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem.”
Perrone said he was simply trying to be respectful during a good faith negotiation — but his offer was rescinded by the committee.
Maybe if he had read New York Magazine’s ridiculous etiquette rules back in February, he would know that addressing more than one woman as “ladies” is frowned upon. From men, it’s “oddly creepy;” from women, it’s “an unnecessary attempt to feign some kind of unity,” according to the magazine.
Odds are, if he did read it, he laughed, assuming it was satire and not a harbinger of his own career sabotage.
What should be a routine hiring became even more mired in the woke muck a few days ago when the second candidate, a woman named Erica Faginski-Stark, reportedly withdrew her application because she failed a student’s purity test.
An unnamed student wrote to the town’s mayor expressing “extreme concerns” about Faginski-Stark’s Facebook posts from two years ago.
Those posts included a petition to “Defend Title IX” and expressed a sentiment that would seem universally rational only a hot second ago: “Only girls should play girls’ sports!”
In 2021, she posted a video from conservative site PragerU, writing, “For EVERY female athlete out there, it’s time to speak up. As a former Div. 1 scholarship athlete and academic & athletic ALL American, our young women just got stripped of their equal rights and equal opportunity.”
The student wrote to Mayor Nicole LaChapelle: “Under the belief that this is her Facebook account, she has posted conservative transphobic rhetoric a multitude of times.”
It’s unclear if Faginski-Stark withdrew her application because she was told it would go no further, but according to the Boston Herald, the police — in an excellent use of resources — verified that it was her Facebook account.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/woke-school-district-in-shambles-over-pc-obsessions/
**********************************************Tradesmen happier, richer in their 20s than university grads
New research from the Ai Group shows that nearly half of all 25 year olds have a degree level qualification but are less likely to be in full-time employment.
Bachelor's degrees are a popular option among young students, but new data claims university might not be the best option for those seeking happiness and wealth in the early years of employment.
Almost 3,000 young people were surveyed as part of Australian Industry (Ai) Group's research into the "real trajectories and early career pathways" of 25-year-olds, with nearly half holding a Bachelor or postgraduate degree.
Tradies performed better than their tertiary-educated counterparts, with a difference of 16 per cent between the groups' wages at that age.
Feeling like the grass – and hip pocket – was greener on the other side, Braidan Quinlan dropped his teaching studies to undertake a carpentry trade.
It's a path he almost never explored, having been pressured in high school to attend university. "When I was in year 12, there wasn't really any talk of a trade or TAFE – it was more just pushing for university," Mr Quinlan said.
"Everyone wanted to go to university, everyone thought it was the right way to go, but if I could go back I would've started an apprenticeship when I was [a teenager]. "It would've been a good way to get ahead, I think."
The third-year apprentice was fed up with the narrative he needed a degree to "get forward in life". "I went [to university] for a few years … but found it really wasn't for me," Mr Quinlan said.
"I got offered this great apprenticeship at HNT Builders and have been enjoying it ever since."
One of the key findings in Ai Group's report was the benefit of "learning in a real-world setting", with almost all postgraduates and apprentices reporting full employment by 25 – meanwhile, only 92 per cent of those holding a Bachelor are employed at this age.
Postgraduates and apprentices also recorded the highest levels of job satisfaction, with respondents particularly pleased with the opportunities for further training as well as the chance to use their skills and experience on the job.
"I'm loving it," Mr Quinlan said. "The skills I've developed, both from trade school and on-the-job, have been phenomenal."
Although he admits a teaching salary would've been "a lot nicer" than the apprentice wages he started on, Mr Quinlan has his eyes set on the big picture. "Long-term, I feel there's so many more avenues to potentially make more money [as a tradie]," he said. "You can start your own business or jump over to the commercial sector.
"There's just more opportunity to make a better living, and that's part of why I moved away from [studying to be a teacher]."
Putting in the hours
The data shows, although tradies are raking in the cash, they also work the most hours. Apprentices undertake an average of seven additional hours, increasing their work week to 42 hours.
"These findings are a strong endorsement of the apprentice/trainee pathway and the many benefits that can follow, including higher pay," Ai Group said.
In the long run
"We should exercise some caution in drawing conclusions comparing pay at age 25 [as] other evidence suggests higher-qualified workers are likely to have stronger wage growth over their careers," the report notes.
But, in those early career years, the job satisfaction of university graduates often suffers as a result of being over-qualified for the positions they hold.
"A total of 36 per cent of Bachelor's degree holders [are] working in jobs below the skill level aligned with their qualification," Ai Group reported.
"Higher education students likely need to combine the deep knowledge of a degree with other types of learning and experience to forge a career.
"This suggests we need a more flexible education and training system that allows young people to acquire knowledge, skills and capabilities throughout their time 'learning' and to continue while they are 'earning and learning'."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-26/tradies-happier-than-university-graduates/102266290
******************************************************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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