I remember how it was -- JR
Thursday, May 11, 2023
Jeffco Public Schools and JCEA’s Are Engaged in a Discriminatory Bargaining Agreement
“No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
Title VI of the Civil RIghts Act of 1964 very explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin.
But that didn’t prevent Jeffco Public Schools and the Jefferson County Education Association from drafting a bargaining agreement last fall that contains undeniably discriminatory anti-white initiatives, offering special programs and professional advancement opportunities to people of color.
The agreement between the district and the association makes clear their intent to “…implement programs to attract, recruit and retain staff, educators and administrators that more closely reflect the racial, ethical and linguistic diversity of the student body of the district, including supporting non-licensed personnel in attaining educator licenses and providing programs for students of color to explore and pursue education as a future profession.”
The agreement further expressed the district and the association’s stated goal to “…create a safe space for educators of color to meet and support each other and find support around the challenges and opportunities of being an educator of color in Jefferson County.”
Nowhere are these programs offered to white faculty or students, even though more than 90 percent of Jefferson County residents are white.
Last September, Parents Defending Education (PDE) filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education against Jeffco Public Schools for discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin, violating both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Colorado parents are already witnessing these discriminatory ideals in action, with leftist dogma like Critical Race Theory (CRT) replacing the three R’s. One parent told The Denver Post her son’s class was “… given a ‘privilege checklist’ so they could reckon with the unearned perks of their identity.”
The article noted, “The impression her son took away is that all white people are racist; all men are sexist; racism is everywhere; slurs against white people are acceptable, and it is OK to stereotype whites.”
Despite the Colorado Springs School District voting to ban the teaching of CRT, many educators – including at least 100 from Colorado – have already signed a pledge authored by the Zinn Education Project, a radical left-wing initiative named after self-proclaimed socialist college professor Howard Zinn, vowing to teach CRT anyway.
The nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association (NEA) tweeted in June of 2021 promoting CRT educational curricula. The tweet was supported by the Colorado Education Association (CEA), the largest teachers' union in the state, and appeared on the same day they retweeted the information about A Day of Action, the event sponsored by the Zinn Education Project, encouraging teachers to pledge to teach CRT regardless of government regulation.
Nearly half of the U.S. has banned or are considering passing legislation to ban the teaching of CRT, but the NEA, who collaborates with approximately 14,000 school districts has formally announced, “We oppose attempts to ban Critical Race Theory.”
Elisha Roberts, chief academic officer at a Denver Public Schools charter school, asserted, “If you want to be the visionary leader that this city needs, talk about what educational equity means. It means rich, white families in this city giving up something. It means reallocating resources to our black and brown schools. It means providing opportunities for educational equity for our black and brown educators, and that means potentially paying them more for being black and brown in our cities, and in our schools.”
Incredibly, the Denver Public Schools’ indoctrination goes even further. In January 2020, the district released a “Resolution on Inclusion for Our LGBTQIA+ Employees, Students and Community Members” updating the district’s human resources policy to include more genders than male and female, requires teachers to call the students by their chosen name regardless of whether the student had legally changed it and prescribes that every Denver Public School and building must offer a gender neutral restroom.
Further, it calls for eliminating practices that “reinforce inflexible structures surrounding gender” and implementing curricular changes that include trans and non-binary students.
The LGBTQIA+ resolution was initiated by the Denver Public School Board Education Director, Tay Anderson, who proudly played a pivotal role in introducing and passing the resolution. Anderson was endorsed by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) in his race for school board, despite the union being aware of sexual misconduct allegations against the candidate.
DCTA also contributed $50,000 in monetary and in-kind donations to his campaign thereafter, campaign finance records show.
Anderson, who won election to the school board in 2019, has been under investigation by a private firm hired by Denver Public Schools following an anonymous accusation of sexual assault.
The school year after Anderson’s LGBTQIA+ initiative was propagated, Denver Public Schools witnessed a 35 percent increase of students reporting they use “nontraditional gender markers.”
The radical left-wing ideology that has infiltrated Colorado public schools goes beyond gender and race, with the largest teachers’ union in the state, the CEA voting in April to approve an expressly anti-capitalism resolution allowing the CEA to lobby anti-capitalistic initiatives through the Colorado legislature.
In an effort to combat this radical indoctrination, Colorado lawmakers introduced curriculum transparency legislation during the 2021 session that would require public schools to post all teaching materials online. The bill drew major opposition from the CEA, the Colorado Association of School Boards and the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, according to lobbying records from the secretary of state’s office.
The CEA leader called the transparency legislation a “massive distraction,” claiming, “There’s simply not a problem to be solved here.”
In fact, her denial of the problem is the problem.
The state of Colorado’s public school system is transforming into a Marxist indoctrination camp, and Coloradans must filter out the lies and distortions to confront these radical initiatives or risk collapsing into a full-fledged authoritarian regime.
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DeSantis Signs 4 of Largest Reforms of Public Education in Florida History
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' office dubs the package of four bills the “Teachers Bill of Rights,” saying it contains some of the largest reforms to public education since the school choice wave that began in the Sunshine State in 1996. (Photo illustration: Chris Ryan/Caiaimage,/Getty Images)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed four landmark pieces of education legislation Tuesday that seek to “empower teachers,” protect schools from the harmful effects of social media, expand student scholarships, and authorize one standardized test as an alternative to two others.
DeSantis’ office has dubbed the package of four bills the “Teachers Bill of Rights,” saying it contains some of the largest reforms to public education since the school choice wave that began in Florida in 1996.
In one significant change, Florida will become the first state to allow use of the Classic Learning Test, or CLT, as an alternative to the Scholastic Aptitude Test or the American College Testing exam to determine whether students qualify to graduate.
SB 256, one of the bills signed by the governor, focuses on “paycheck protection.” This includes prohibiting teachers unions from deducting union dues directly from teachers’ paychecks. Florida joins other states, such as Indiana, that already have taken such a step to prevent teachers unions from sneaking thousands of dollars a year out of teachers’ pockets with such incremental paycheck deductions.
SB 256 also requires annual audits and financial disclosures for all teachers unions, both local and national affiliates, operating in Florida. The Florida Attorney General’s Office will be required to investigate suspected union fraud.
Teachers unions in Florida will be banned from parlaying with school boards in backroom deals at taxpayers’ and teachers’ expense.
In perhaps the biggest change of SB 256, teachers unions now must garner a membership of at least 60% of a school district’s faculty to remain recognized by the district or to engage in collective bargaining on behalf of members.
Another bill signed by DeSantis, HB 1537, rolls back regulations that have been accused of stunting growth in Florida’s education sector for decades. Temporary teaching certificates will be good for five years rather than three, and all levels of certification will have fewer “unnecessary bureaucratic requirements.”
Specifically, teachers have new pathways to maintain and renew their certifications. This will begin Florida’s disentanglement from deeply out-of-date professional development requirements that have eaten up thousands of hours of teachers’ time with little to show in gained skill or methodology.
Concerning teacher training, HB 1537 also allows “aspiring teachers” to apply for temporary certification if they hold professional skill in other but related fields—even if those aspiring teachers aren’t members of teacher education programs on the university level.
In a monumental shift, Florida is now the first state to authorize the Classic Learning Test for students to qualify for graduation and to earn one of the state’s Bright Futures scholarships. The CLT is an alternative assessment for high school students that focuses on evaluating “English, grammar, and mathematical skills, providing a comprehensive measure of achievement and aptitude.”
Many universities have begun adding the CLT to their standardized testing choices.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, whose background is in education, points out: “More than 200 private colleges and universities accept the CLT, and Florida’s fastest growing Catholic university, Ave Maria University, recently made it the school’s ‘preferred’ college entrance exam for applicants.”
The College Board, which creates and administers the SAT and high school Advanced Placement courses, has received heavy criticism in recent years both for changing content on exams and including racially divisive, historically inaccurate, and unscientific material.
This, as well as the booming growth in classical education via charter, private, and homeschooling, has driven the CLT to national prominence in the past five years.
Including the CLT as an option for high school students to graduate could be a step toward giving students of diverse learning backgrounds a choice to focus on more “tried and true” subjects of study.
CLT founder Jeremy Wayne Tate told The Daily Signal:
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of standardized testing. In addition to providing insight into where a student is at academically, the content of this test has a profound influence in shaping curriculum. I could not be more excited that Florida has made this move. We expect at least three more states [to do so] next year.
DeSantis also signed HB 477, which reduces term limits for Florida’s public school boards from 12 to eight years. This change, according to the governor’s office, brings school boards into line with the term limits set for Florida’s governor, the governor’s Cabinet members, and the Florida Legislature.
In another landmark action, the Legislature approved House Joint Resolution 31, which will put forward a referendum to return the state’s public school boards to a partisan election system in which candidates may identify themselves as Republicans, Democrats, or members of another party. The change would make Florida the fifth state to allow openly partisan elections for school boards.
The fourth bill signed by DeSantis, HB 379, focuses on taking social media out of Florida’s public education system altogether. It requires public school districts to “prevent students from connecting to social media sites on district-owned computers and servers,” as well as prohibits TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media program, to be accessed on district devices.
HB 379 gives teachers increased authority to establish their own rules, free of administration intervention, for students’ cellphone use in their classroom.
So far, responses from both legacy media and teachers unions have been interesting, to say the least.
An Associated Press headline accuses DeSantis of “taking aim” with the new laws at a teachers union that previously had “defied” him, although no specific teachers union is mentioned in any of the bills signed by the governor.
NBC affiliate WFLA-8 of Tampa, Florida, vaguely accuses DeSantis of “easing graduation requirements,” though reporter Trevor Sochocki doesn’t specify how the bills he signed would ease any graduation requirements whatsoever.
Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, released a written statement in which he claimed: “This new law grossly oversteps in trying to silence teachers, staff, professors and most other public employees. We will not go quietly—our students and our professions are simply too important.”
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South Dakota History Standards Scrap Critical Race Theory, Build on Hillsdale Foundation
While much of the cultural debate about education centers on school libraries removing sexually explicit books, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem’s team has been hard at work crafting new K-12 history and social studies standards that her chief of staff calls a “model for the rest of the country.”
Noem rejected an earlier effort in 2021, which her team faults for a leftist slant and for including critical race theory. The governor gathered a new commission to compile standards in 2022, including a former politics professor who had taught at Hillsdale College, a Christian school with decades of outreach in the K-12 classical school movement that is known for its rigorous approach to Western and American history. That former professor, Will Morrisey, served as a facilitator for a diverse commission—25% of which was Native American—that tailored the standards for South Dakota.
“When it comes to social studies standards, the governor wanted us to create a model for the rest of the country, and I think the rest of the country will see a model that they can follow,” Mark Miller, Noem’s chief of staff and a member of the 2022 commission, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview last week. “We think this is an incredible positive change and step forward in terms of providing a true and honest American history for the children of South Dakota from K to 12.”
The state’s Board of Education Standards voted to approve the standards in April. Miller mentioned the standards’ three pillars: world history that provides the foundation for U.S. history, Native American history that formed South Dakota, and U.S. history.
Ben Jones, the state historian and a member of the 2022 commission, said the new standards represent a model for the rest of the country because they reject the approach of progressive education reformer John Dewey, who transformed American education to focus on skills, rather than content.
The new standards “put content and knowledge at the center of things,” Jones told The Daily Signal in an interview last week. “I think they’re a model because they excavate the John Dewey progressive notion about skills” and using education as a tool to “funnel students into jobs,” rather than equipping them with the knowledge to be informed citizens.
Some education groups have opposed the standards, suggesting they require students to learn too much.
“I believe that more facts do not necessarily mean better standards,” Summer Schultz, president of the South Dakota School Superintendents Association, told KELOLAND. “We need every minute of the day that we can to make sure our students are leaving those classes at grade level in reading and mathematics so that they have that strong foundation to be successful academic learners later.” She warned that if students are focused on memorizing facts, “they have a lack of balance.”
Jones, the state historian, insisted that teachers can incorporate a great deal of civics and history material into reading lessons. “In the elementary years, the content is going to reinforce their reading,” he noted, which “can be heavy on history, civics, economy, geography, and stories about them.”
He also noted that South Dakota is launching professional development programs for teachers to help them incorporate these civics lessons into the curriculum.
Hillsdale weighs in
Kathleen O’Toole, assistant provost for K-12 education at Hillsdale College, noted that social studies standards “cannot, by definition, require memorization.” Yet she defended memorization as “important for setting a basic timeline in the students’ minds before deeper inquiry takes place.”
“Hillsdale’s own recommended curricula are built on this principle, and in its affiliated schools, teachers lead students through a deep inquiry of history through thoughtful questions and the discussion that naturally follows,” O’Toole added. “In any course of study, materials should be presented in a context that is age-appropriate and takes into account the developmental stages of students.”
O’Toole noted that many state officials, school administrators, and concerned parents often reach out to Hillsdale’s K-12 office for recommendations. In this case, South Dakota tapped Morrisey “independently of Hillsdale.” Hillsdale College did not review or approve the South Dakota standards.
“While Dr. Morrisey’s work was not connected to Hillsdale, we are proud that he used Hillsdale’s generic civics standards as the basis for the new South Dakota standards,” she noted. “The commission customized Hillsdale’s generic materials to reflect South Dakota’s Native Indian tribes and other historical details unique to that state. Hillsdale College believes that high-quality social studies standards should be robust, nonpartisan, and thorough. It is heartening whenever Hillsdale’s work is an aid to establishing such standards.”
Critical race theory
The true root of the controversy may involve debates over critical race theory, an approach to history, civics, and other disciplines that encourages students to find “systemic racism” throughout American institutions and to reexamine every aspect of life through a race-based lens that assumes white people are oppressors and black people are oppressed.
Miller, the governor’s chief of staff, said Noem moved to craft new standards because the 2021 proposed standards had a “leftward tilt” and politicized standards are “simply unacceptable to the governor.”
“We didn’t want to see a leftward tilt in the teaching of history, which we think has infected too much of the teaching of the public school system in general since Dewey,” he explained. “In our history classes and civics classes, we have to be careful not to teach our children that our country has been a bad actor since 1776 or even before that, but rather has been a shining light for the rest of the world.”
Jones, the state historian, said critical race theory is “a great conversation for college students and grad students to have, but it’s not proper historical inquiry.” Proper history involves investigating the facts to draw conclusions, but “critical race theory provides that answer right up front.”
K-12 teachers do students a “disservice” if they teach through a critical race theory lens because it leaves students “underinformed about and unable to test your preconceived notions.”
Jones noted that many commentators suggest that “critical race theory is just teaching about race, which is absolutely wrong.”
“There’s plenty of teaching about race in the standards we have, but there’s no preconceived notion about what the outcome is going to be,” he noted.
Jones praised Morrisey’s contributions for including “plenty of material about race, slavery, the Japanese exclusion laws, Chinese exclusion laws, the KKK.”
Jones and Miller insisted that the standards include the dark parts of U.S. history, but the state historian declared that “the idea that because someone is a certain race, they have certain talents” does not belong in K-12 education.
Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation who has analyzed the standards, praised them for excluding “woke orthodoxy.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
“These standards appropriately reject the woke orthodoxy surrounding radical gender theory and racial preferences found in states such as Minnesota and California,” he told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “The standards are rigorous and involve a nontrivial amount of facts and specific content regarding notable individuals and events in American and world history.”
World and Native American history
Yet the standards do not just include U.S. history—warts and all—but also the longer history of human civilization.
“The United States didn’t just spring anew,” Miller said. “It came from an intellectual history going back centuries, and that’s the idea for these standards.”
The new South Dakota standards require lessons on ancient Egypt, China, India, Babylon, Greece, Persia, and Rome, along with medieval and modern European, Middle Eastern, and Asian history, at appropriate age levels.
Finally, the standards include a great deal of Native American history.
“The governor wanted a significant role for Native Americans to play,” Miller said, noting that a quarter of the commission was Native American. He mentioned Joe Circle Bear with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, state Rep. Tamara St. John with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Tribe, and Stephanie Hiatt with the Florida Seminole tribe.
“These standards have more teaching of Native American history than any standards South Dakota has had before,” Miller added.
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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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