I remember how it was -- JR
Supreme Court Strikes Down Race-Based Admissions at Harvard and U.N.C.
It's a wonder that blatant racial discrimination survived there for so long, given the 14th Amendment. And the Left are mourning the loss of their power to discriminate. Ever since Karl Marx they have been obsessed with race. Marx was an antisemite even though he was himself a Jew!
I note in the NYT article below that Democrats were pressing for equal opportunity when in fact they were plainly advocating UNequal opportunity. The mind of a Leftist is a strange thing. To them, black can be white, if I may risk using those terms
If Harvard really is forced to admit purely on merit without regard to race, its student body will shortly become mainly Asian, with a white minority of mainly Jews. Much heartburn! We can be sure that who is actually admitted in the near future will be very carefully and widely scrutinized so Harvard will not easily be able to slide around the law.
What Harvard will do has however already been foreshadowed: Blacks will be considered to have endured "Hardship" and will be admitted on those grounds. But a lot of immigrant Asians will have claims of real hardship, so the lawsuits will keep coming. In a rerun of the Bakke case, some smart working class white or Asian kid will challenge the selection of a middle-class black kid and the fun will begin. I would not like to be in the shoes of any black kid who does get selected though. He will be minutely scrutinized
The 6-3 ruling could drastically alter college admissions policies across the country. Criticizing the decision, President Biden said this was “not a normal court” and directed the Education Department “to analyze what practices can build a more inclusive and diverse” student body.
Race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, the latest decision by its conservative supermajority upending decades of jurisprudence on a contentious issue of American life.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, said the two programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner” and “involve racial stereotyping,” in a manner that violates the Constitution.
Universities can consider how race has affected a student’s life — a topic they may write about in an application essay, for example — but he warned schools not to use such considerations as a surreptitious means of racial selection. “Universities may not simply establish through the application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today,” he wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarized her dissent from the bench — a rare move that signals profound disagreement. The court, she wrote, was “further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”
“The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated,” she wrote.
The decision reflects the country’s division over affirmative action, which breaks along racial and political lines, and could have far-reaching effects. Beyond forcing colleges and universities across the country to revisit their admissions practices, the ruling could set the stage for challenges to diversity efforts in the business world.
President Biden assailed the ruling in a televised address hours after it was handed down, saying the country could not allow the decision to be “the last word” on the issue of affirmative action.
“Discrimination still exists in America,” he said, repeating his words for emphasis. “Today’s decision does not change that.”
Mr. Biden paused before leaving his remarks as a reporter asked if the court was “rogue.” “This is not a normal court,” he responded.
The opinions in the case — including concurring opinions from Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh and another dissenting opinion from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — total 237 pages. (Justice Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case because she had been on the university’s board of overseers.)
Chief Justice Roberts, who has long been skeptical of racial preferences, emphasized that students “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual.” That is likely to make admissions essays a crucial way for students to discuss their racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Mr. Biden offered guidance to colleges about how to move forward, proposing they take into account the adversity a student has overcome when choosing applicants from the pool of students that meet their admission standards. Colleges “should not abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds that reflect all of America,” he said.
The two cases were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by Edward Blum, a legal activist who has organized many lawsuits challenging race-conscious admissions policies and voting rights laws, several of which have reached the Supreme Court. He said his organization would be “vigilant” in making sure colleges and universities adhere to the ruling, warning their leaders not to try to create workarounds in order to consider race.
Conservative leaders and advocacy groups celebrated the ruling. Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, one of the nation’s largest conservative groups, said that the affirmative action ruling Thursday, coupled with the Supreme Court’s decision last year that ended the constitutional right to abortion, “serve as a triumphant return to restoring our tattered Constitution.”
Nine states already ban the use of race-conscious college admissions at their public universities, and their experience could provide a sign of the ruling’s consequences.
Congressional Democrats condemned Thursday’s Supreme Court decision dismantling race-conscious college admissions as a step backward for racial justice, while Republicans largely celebrated the ruling, saying it would make the process more fair.
Democrats predicted that the decision would diminish progress on racial justice, and many committed to continue pressing for equal opportunity.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/29/us/affirmative-action-supreme-court
*********************************************************Suddenly, School Choice: Its Rapid Post-Pandemic Expansion Sets Up a Big Pass/Fail Test for Education
A growing number of states are adopting a comprehensive new type of school choice program that would pose a threat to public schools if many students were to leave them for a private education.
Eight states – including Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia – have approved “universal” or near-universal school choice laws since 2021. They open the door completely to school choice by making all students, including those already in private schools and from wealthy families, eligible for about $7,000 to $10,000 in state funding each year for their education.
What’s more, most of these states have also enacted education savings accounts, or ESAs. They give families much more freedom than traditional tuition vouchers, depositing state funds into private accounts to spend on virtually anything related to learning, from homeschooling and online classes to therapy and supplies.
The universal laws amount to a bracing change in school choice. Such programs have existed for decades but until now have been limited to a narrow set of students, such as those from low-income families, or in poor performing public schools, or in need of special education.
By making all students eligible, regardless of their ability to pay for a private education, universal programs in the eight states expand the pool of possible participants by about 4 million students, according to an estimate by EdChoice, an advocacy group. That’s a 40% increase in eligibility since 2021, bringing the total to 13.6 million students after the programs start in the next few years.
School choice advocates – led by grassroots conservative Christian groups, big money political lobbies like American Federation for Children, and education nonprofits like EdChoice – call the universal programs a major milestone in their long and contentious battle for parental rights. They argue that parents, not the government, are best suited to direct the education of their children and should receive taxpayer support to do so as a competitive check on public schools they also pay for but consider failing or inadequate.
But over the years, school choice has suffered from a low participation rate, with fewer than 1 million students partaking in state programs today, mostly to attend religous schools, in a nation with about 50 million public school students. The big question is whether universal laws, paired with the flexibility of ESAs to customized learning, will spur a major exodus to private schooling.
“Universal choice is really a significant move beyond the existing programs we have now,” says Professor Patrick Wolf at the University of Arkansas, who has studied school choice for 25 years. “In terms of regulating education providers, this is a much stronger move into the free-market provision of K-12.”
This sudden success reflects both long-term trends and recent events. Americans’ satisfaction in public education has slowly eroded over the last two decades. And during the pandemic, student test scores in math and English plummeted as a result of ineffective remote learning, with satisfaction dropping sharply from a majority before COVID to a mere 42% last year, according to Gallup.
Advocates in Republican-controlled states seized the opportunity created by COVID, when teachers unions blocked the reopening of schools, spurring parents to search for educational options, including homeschooling, to keep their kids from falling behind.
“Parents saw there were many ways to educate kids,” says Robert Enlow, president of EdChoice. “It opened up a world of possibilities for them.”
At the same time, the spread of a woke curriculum following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 provided some parents with another reason to seek alternatives to public schools. In cities from Seattle to Buffalo, students have been taught a version of history casting white Americans as privileged oppressors and blacks and Latinos as powerless victims of structural racism.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis made these two related educational crusades ‒ curbing political correctness and passing universal choice ‒ his own in the runup to his campaign for president. In 2022 he spearheaded a Florida ban on teaching that America is racist at its core, and also won restrictions on instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity – prohibitions embraced by several other states as well. Then earlier this year, DeSantis won legislative approval of a universal law, making Florida the largest state to adopt school choice for all.
***********************************************
DeSantis sues Biden administration over higher ed accreditation process
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday filed a lawsuit against President Biden’s Department of Education, accusing the administration of unlawfully interfering in the Sunshine State’s higher education accreditation process.
“I will not allow Joe Biden’s Department of Education to defund America’s No. 1 higher education system all because we refuse to bow to unaccountable accreditors who think they should run Florida’s public universities,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Tampa, Fla., where he announced the lawsuit.
Higher education institutions are required to be accredited by one of several private accrediting agencies to receive federal funds from the Department of Education.
In the complaint, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody writes that “Congress has ceded unchecked power to private accrediting agencies to dictate education standards to colleges and universities” and that the accrediting agencies have “broad power to apply their own standards to colleges and universities, subject only to limited judicial review.”
Moody argues that because federal law requires “reasonable cause” to change accreditors, it is unjustly burdening the state, which now requires colleges and universities to switch their accreditor every few years.
The AG claims that the Department of Education is targeting Florida’s new legislation, citing “guidance documents” issued to accreditors “seeking to deter new accreditors from working with Florida.”
The new state law also allows universities to sue accreditors for damages if they believe they had been negatively affected.
DeSantis and Moody on Thursday noted that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or SACS, which oversees accrediting in the Sunshine State, “threatened the accreditation of Florida State University” in 2021 when Richard Corcoran, Florida’s then commissioner of education, was a candidate to be the next president of the school.
SACS argued that Corcoran’s candidacy posed a potential conflict of interest if he refused to step down from his role as education commissioner.
“For too long, private academic accreditors have been holding our colleges and universities hostage,” Moody said Thursday. “Thanks to the fearless leadership of Governor DeSantis, we are fighting to take back our public postsecondary education system from unelected private organizations that have no accountability or oversight.”
Earlier this year, DeSantis appointed six new members to the New College of Florida’s board of trustees – where Corcoran eventually landed as interim president – in an effort to move the institution in a more conservative ideological direction.
The governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate also signed legislation last month that bans state and federal funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state colleges and universities.
“Throughout my time in office, I have made it a priority to bring transparency and accountability to higher education and to reorient the mission of our colleges and universities away from purveying destructive ideologies and back toward the pursuit of truth and the preparation of our students for success,” DeSantis said Thursday. “The Biden administration’s attempts to block these reforms is an abuse of federal power, and with this lawsuit, we will ensure that Florida’s pursuit of educational excellence will continue.”
******************************************************
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
******************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment