I remember how it was -- JR
Parents Get Back in Charge of Their Children’s Education
Parents in the pandemic era have asserted themselves with new vigor for the sake of their children. Parents no longer presume that the zoned public school is the right fit, or that the school puts students first.
Nor do parents presume that most teachers wish to reproduce the values of the community. Since 2020, Americans’ satisfaction with K-12 education has plummeted.
Their skepticism is warranted: All too many schools seek to undermine, destroy, and rebuild American society in a revolutionary, neo-Marxist image.
Outrageous? Yes. Believable? Yes, as documented by the stories in a new Pacific Research Institute book. “The Great Parent Revolt: How Parents and Grassroots Leaders Are Fighting Critical Race Theory in America’s Schools,” by Lance Izumi and co-authors, provides a dozen accounts from around the country.
Many parents will be able to see themselves in these stories. The point is to inspire more parents to advocate for a high-quality education that doesn’t divide students by race, ethnicity, and other characteristics in order to tear apart American society.
By that measure, this book admirably succeeds. What the parents in these stories have done is not so difficult, and organizations of concerned parents are now all over the country, ready to empower and equip newcomers.
Polls consistently show that when people learn what critical race theory is, they generally dislike it. But if you come to this book thinking that the only problem is CRT, be prepared to learn that the real situation is worse. The book focuses significant attention on critical race theory, but the bigger culprit is critical theory generally, with its roots in a Marxist binary of class warfare.
Indeed, many American schools are focused not merely on the oppressed-oppressor binary regarding race, but also regarding sex and the usual list of identities. If you are “oppressed” in multiple ways (for example: a black overweight gay woman), then congratulations, you have intersectional oppression (described in Chapter 3). The various categories of the oppressed commonly are expected to act in solidarity to smash and rebuild American society, culture, and government.
So, I recommend lingering on the treatment of ethnic studies in chapters 2 and 8—this field is not merely “a Trojan horse for CRT,” the authors note, but problematic in additional ways—such as its frequent antisemitism.
In the proposed California curriculum, notably, critical ethnic studies or liberated ethnic studies is the dominant branch of the subject. Proponents of this “militant” doctrine teach an extreme version of the victim-oppressor binary: They all too often dismiss leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. for being too “docile”; they reject math, capitalism, private property, and sometimes even money as oppressive; and they call for completely reworking society.
Ironically, one parent notes: “Critical or Liberated Ethnic Studies has predetermined outcomes. They’re not teaching kids to think critically.”
Even so, it is fair that this book focuses primarily on race, because race is the most prevalent victim-oppressor binary. Also, the authors are fully correct to observe that teaching critical race theory means teaching the tenets or principles of CRT; a lesson doesn’t need to be titled “Critical Race Theory” to count. Not just ethnic studies but also social and emotional learning and other innocent-sounding pedagogies have become infused with CRT.
The story of Gabs Clark and her son is one of many showing that any alert parent can fight back successfully. If a school compels a student to reveal his personal opinions, forces him to say he’s an oppressor because of his race, sex, or religion, and tries to get him to change, he has a good chance of succeeding in court. (Thanks to the Liberty Justice Center for taking her son’s case.)
After Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, complained of having too many Asian students and revolutionized admissions to get the numbers down, parent Asra Nomani publicly criticized this racism by Fairfax County Public Schools. Nomani became an activist, founded the Coalition for TJ, and sued the school board with the help of the Pacific Legal Foundation. She won.
With smoking-gun documents that can be found with requests under open-records laws, other parents can win, too. As the judge wrote in the Virginia case, quoting earlier cases, “racial balancing for its own sake is ‘patently unconstitutional.’” (The decision is on hold pending an appeal.)
A lawsuit is far from the only option. Exit is another.
The student story of Joshua (not his real name) is one of several chapters showing divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” activities in action. Students were to reveal their personal and sexual preferences, and the programming used racial stereotypes to divide students from one another.
Joshua saw what happened to students who spoke out—a “horrific outbreak of screaming”—so he self-censored. Greater education freedom would permit more students to leave hostile environments such as Joshua’s.
Another activist, Xi Van Fleet, grew up in revolutionary China and exited that environment, but she sees commonalities with America today. Most notable is the proliferation of “bias reporting” protocols that encourage students to inform on one another to the authorities.
In the bias reporting program at Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools, students inform on each other anonymously. Van Fleet adds that one study found that 80% of K-12 students “never heard about the Chinese Cultural Revolution,” and it shows.
In Rhode Island, Nicole Solas fought back by calling for transparency. She had enrolled her daughter in a local kindergarten, but in 2020 the school went hard into critical race theory. After she wrangled this confession from the principal, she filed about 160 open-records requests for the details.
The local school board publicly considered suing Solas, apparently hoping to hide the documents. Instead of fulfilling their public mission, school boards all too often inflate the costs of fulfilling record requests and prevent parents from speaking at meetings.
In fact, the National School Boards Association even enlisted the federal government to declare outspoken parents to be terrorist threats.
Although her local school board ultimately declined to sue Solas, the teachers union did sue her. She fought back with help from the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, and the union withdrew its complaint.
Solas also sued the school district, accusing it of “holding meetings for the district’s racial advisory board in secret,” in violation of Rhode Island’s Open Meetings Act.
Solas’ case is rare, though—records requests by parents often work without lawsuits. And another route to transparency is legislation. More and more states require that course materials be posted online or that parents be allowed to review these materials in person.
Another way to get school and school board records is to run for school board and win. Amazingly, many parents are doing just that. Even San Francisco voters recalled (fired) some of their worst school board members.
One political action committee, the 1776 Project PAC, claims to have “flipped” more than 100 school boards or school board seats since 2021, while Moms for Liberty (see below) successfully endorsed dozens of candidates and flipped seven more districts.
These parents now can use their power for good. After Mari Barke won a school board seat in Orange County, California, she held public forums that exposed critical race theory in schools and demonstrated how CRT often is unlawful because it discriminates on the basis of race.
After Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich each won board seats in their Florida districts, they formed Moms for Liberty to educate and empower parents, fight critical race theory, and promote equal opportunity. They also call for high standards instead of the lower standards needed to produce “equity” (characteristically resulting in more similar outcomes by race but worse outcomes overall, as Joshua’s story relates).
The hard work by Justice and Descovich has led to about 275 chapters with a total of 115,000 members, by recent count. If a parent isn’t sure where to go, Moms for Liberty is one great place to begin (or Parents Defending Education, which also files free speech lawsuits, or other organizations mentioned in the book).
Parents don’t have to do all this work alone. Many teachers, for example, do agree with the resisting parents and can be allies and whistleblowers—they are, the book says, “as frustrated as the public about the counterproductive thought indoctrination going on in public education.”
Meanwhile, Izumi and the other authors add, “grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other ordinary Americans are also on the front line” defending American freedom and opportunity against critical theory.
Notably, Ryan Girdusky, founder of the 1776 Project PAC, says he also finds support from moderate Democrats who oppose the revolutionaries (often confidentially, because of progressive bullying).
This kind of solidarity will be hard to beat.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/04/28/parents-get-back-in-charge-of-their-childrens-education/
*****************************************Rescuing Our Kids From Public School's Pleasure Island
There is a terrifying logic to the leftist infiltration of our public schools. If they control the minds of children, they have their hooks in the future of the country. Aside from the multitude of evils that this is already producing (transgenderism, critical race theory, environmental cultists), kids are failing academically. This is particularly true in the arenas of history and civics.
History and civics actually got the lowest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — i.e. the Nation's Report Card — when the test was given to eighth-graders. These represent the lowest scores since the test was first administered in the 1990s. Only 13% of eighth-graders were proficient in civics, and only 20% were proficient in history. Math and reading scores dropped to a distressing level as well. However, history and civics — the subjects dealing with culture and the world — achieving the lowest scores is especially telling.
The Biden administration has blamed the low scores on the pandemic and Republicans. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: "Kids have lost so much in the pandemic. This is why, when the president walked in, he made [it] ... a priority to open schools." This particular delusion about President Joe Biden being in a hurry to open schools is revisionist history, but the bigger issue at hand is that this score decline has been developing for years now.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Commissioner Peggy Carr has been doing research on the NEAP scores in her job within the Department of Education. According to her findings, these latest scores have made her "very, very concerned, because it's a decline that started in 2014 long before we even thought about Covid." She goes on to correctly demand that teachers get this material in front of the kids.
Knowing our Constitution, how our government is supposed to work, and the U.S.'s story within history are all vitally important so that our next generation of voting citizens is informed and educated.
When it comes to failing students in general and these two subjects in particular, there are many elements at play. There is the political (boards of education and activist teachers), there is the cultural (the sort of environment at play within the schools), and there is the individual student.
Let's start with the political. When a growing number of people with the power to influence and teach history and civics are increasingly anti-America and anti-Western culture, they are not going to be able to teach these subjects well. As The Wall Street Journal points out: "Dropping scores reflect the falling quality of history and civics lessons taught in American schools, which has been fueled by political acrimony. ... Teachers have said controversies over the content of lessons have damped morale. These subjects are considered hard to staff in many districts, according to teachers union officials."
Who has made teaching this material difficult? The anti-America teachers have made it difficult by actively teaching children to hate their country and all that we have built as a nation. The woke teachers unions, school boards, and school administrators have made it difficult by threatening conservative teachers and dictating what they can and cannot say.
On a cultural level, as our Brian Mark Weber wrote back in 2017: "Universities today are more interested in turning students into political activists than knowledgeable citizens who value the ideals upon which our country was founded. As a result, Americans have a lot to say about 'rights' that their teachers and professors have conjured up, but they know nothing about the rights in the Constitution."
Then there is the challenge of the individual student. History and civics are two of those subjects that some kids really struggle with. A good teacher can get them to engage, but even so, in this instant-answer-in-your-pocket age, the information doesn't necessarily stick.
Then there is the whole other problem that no one outside of the teaching profession is willing to speak out about: Student behavior.
Teaching is a work of heart, but many of these students are straight-up hooligans. These kids have been allowed to do whatever they want. They have no respect for authority and they have no boundaries or consequences that are meaningful or corrective to their abhorrent behavior. This is cause for a high burnout rate amongst teachers. Who wants to teach angry rude student who don't want to learn?
These next two generations of kids in the public schools are looking and behaving like the kids in "Pinocchio" who run away from home and go to Pleasure Island. Those kids are allowed to do whatever they want — break every taboo, hurt one another — and eventually the kids are turned into donkeys. Our culture and political overlords are creating this Pleasure Island-type mentality for students and literally turning them into Democrat donkeys and ignorant jackasses.
There are several solutions available to parents. You can take your kids out of public school and try private or charter schools. Homeschooling is also a great option. Hope is not lost if parents are invested in educating their children in these subjects. Lead by example and make history and civics come alive for your children. And above all, emphasize the importance of being an intelligent and discerning person.
Our government has shown through its public schools what it is willing to do to ideologically and morally kidnap your students. It's time to stop letting them get away with it. Our kids are too important.
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Educators Report Spike in Student Behavioral Problems Since Lockdowns
Last year, a study released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 40 percent of teenagers reported feeling “sad or hopeless” during the pandemic. This was a time where schools closed their doors, forcing students to finish their classes online and be separated from their classmates. Some states kept students from in-person learning into the fall.
Lockdowns had devastating impacts on America’s youth, including massive learning loss. And, a study published recently found that students misbehaving escalated after lockdowns, according to educators.
A study published late last month by the EdWeek Research Center found that seventy percent of educators, including over 1000 teachers, principals and school district leaders, said that students are misbehaving more than in fall 2019 – right before pandemic lockdowns. One-third of educators specifically said that students are misbehaving “a lot more.”
In December 2021, 66 percent of educators surveyed said that their students were misbehaving “more or a lot more” compared with fall of 2019.
In a January study, 80 percent of educators said since the pandemic students have been less motivated to do their best in school. One-third of all educators said that the students, schools, anand school districts were unmotivated. Sixty-eight percent of educators said their students’ morale was lower than before the pandemic.
Crystal Thorpe, the principal of Fishers Junior High School in Indiana, told The Hill that last year was the worst year for student behavior she’d seen at her school, including fights and other kinds of aggressive behavior. Thorpe gathered all her faculty together last year to come up with a game plan to handle it.
“I think it’s because we just — we paid more attention to it because I think as a staff, we were all exhausted last year, and we were talking about ‘OK, what’s going on? How do we better address this? How do we handle this?’ And I think for this year, we’ve actually got a much better handle on it because we knew that it was a problem last year,” she said.
"It’s no surprise that after forcing kids to learn at home for months on end, they may have forgotten how to behave in a classroom. When kids finally returned to school, administrators began swapping any sort of punitive disciplinary practices for ‘restorative justice’ or ‘healing circles.’
These practices sound nice, and they make administrators sound like kind, caring community builders. In reality, these practices and the administrators that use them are an absolute sham. They create unproductive learning environments and fail to prepare children for life outside of the classroom," Alex Nester, an investigative fellow with Parents Defending Education, told Townhall. "‘Restorative’ practices destroy school infrastructure that instilled students with integrity, urgency, and discipline. But it’s easier for administrators to use ‘restorative’ practices than actually discipline students. And as a result, our classrooms are a mess."
In addition to misbehaving students, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found last year that math and reading scores among 9-year-olds fell across all race and income levels in the past two years, though they were significantly worse among low-ranking students. Those in the 90th percentile showed a 3 percent drop in math scores, while students in the 10th percentile fell 12 points, which Leah covered. Average 9-year-old scores declined the most on record for math (seven points) and in reading since 1990 (five points).
National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner Peggy Carr said that “school shootings, violence, and classroom disruptions are up, as are teacher and staff vacancies, absenteeism, cyberbullying, and students’ use of mental health services,” in response to the numbers. She did not acknowledge how students not attending school at all contributed to the learning loss.
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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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